The After Party
by Lesera128
Summary: L.A. 2003. After Angel's romp with Eve at the Wolfram & Hart Halloween Party, an expected but unanticipated visitor from Washington D.C. ends up in his penthouse and asks where he's been. Set at the end of Angel episode 5x05-"The Life of the Party." Bones/Angel crossover. Very AU. Sequel to "Toe to Toe," "Barging In," "Making Him Beg" & "Comfort on the Edge of Reason." Complete.
1. Part I: The Late Arrival

**The After Party**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **_Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from Bones or Angel... or anything else. Yes, we're wrecking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? _::blinks:: _Good. Then, moving on―_

**Summary: **_After Angel's romp with Eve at the Wolfram and Hart Halloween Party, a surprise visitor from Washington D.C. ends up in his penthouse and asks where he's been. Set at the end of Angel episode 5x05 - "The Life of the Party." Bones/Angel crossover. Very, very AU. Sequel to "Toe to Toe," "Barging In," "Making Him Beg" and "Comfort on the Edge of Reason." Complete. _

**Logistical Notes: **_For those who are wondering, in Bones chronology, this story would take place two years before season 1...or one year before Brennan worked the Gemma Arrington case with Booth._

**A/N**_**: **In case you might've forgotten, welcome to piece number five in what's a scheduled nine-piece story arc about Angel(us) and Brennan. Like it's older siblings, if you haven't read the other four pieces in this series yet before you tackle this one, we can most certainly guarantee you you'll be a very confused and unhappy reader. Once again, not that it's a suprise, but dharmasera got wordy. You'd think we'd just give up and admit that we don't do not wordy, but...well, what can we say? We're just stubborn like that. Anyway, once again, what was supposed to be a one-shot standalone will post as three parts (hopefully, spread out over approximately 24 hours). The good news for our loyal readers in the UK and Ireland, one half of your writing duo is sojourning in Jolly Ole England for work right now, so that means since some monkey told Lesera128 that she's the brains of our little operation, that means we're posting on the UK GMT clock. Still, for readers back home ::waves at US:: we hope the odd posting schedule won't detract you too much from sharing a comment or two. We can't really stress this enough...feedback on pieces like this are so important. We do this (i.e., write fan fic) mostly because we are trying to tell some type of story. But, with the time, energy, and effort that goes into a piece like this (and, really, all our writings), it really sucks when people read it, but don't say anything. So, please...share your thoughts. We won't be greedy and ask for reviews for each chapter, but it would mean more to us than we can say if even half of the people who are reading this speak up and chime in with some feedback. Now, without further adieu...on with the story._

**UNF Alert: **_This piece has some very serious unfness. Go figure. Nothing too edgy or deviant, but nonetheless, if you're not into reading about the steamy side of life, or really shouldn't be, we ask that you take a pass and find another story, because this will have some pretty steamy stuff of the seriously unf variety. However, if you're like most of our readers and dig that kind of thing, tee up that triple-grande latte and get ready for a real zinger. Enjoy!_

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**Part I: The Late Arrival**

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As he walked out of the private elevator that led to the floor on which his penthouse was located, there were only three things that Angel really wanted to do in that moment. The first was to find out if the Flyers had actually managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat (answer: probably not, as it had been a bit of a rough season so far...or, at least, the last few games had been since the season was only a few weeks old). The second was a long and hot shower. The third was to fall into bed to sleep uninterrupted for five or six solid hours of rest. As he went over the list in his mind, he couldn't help but feel as if he was forgetting something important. But, after he'd gone over the list twice: (check hockey, get clean, go to bed), he couldn't think of any other pressing responsibilities or obligations that he needed to take care of besides eating. And, since he wasn't hungry and could get some blood to feed on in the morning, he'd already crossed that one of his list of possible to-dos. Stifling an exasperated groan of exhaustion, Angel moderated it to a loud grunt as he approached his front door.

The evening's festivities had taken more out of him than he'd thought they would, not the most unexpected happening being when he'd ended up on the floor of his office naked and horizontal with Eve of all people.

"What a friggin' bone-headed idea _that _was," he muttered to himself as he unlocked the front door to his penthouse and walked towards his bedroom. "Well, at least I don't have to do a walk of shame..." Angel had already tossed the jacket of his black pinstripe suit on the chair in the outer room as he padded in the direction of his bedroom. His rumpled burnt orange sateen shirt was wrinkled from the number of times he'd already taken it on and off that evening as he unbuttoned it once more. On autopilot, he wasn't really paying attention when he walked by his king-sized bed, discarding his shoes and socks as he went straight into the bathroom and immediately into his walk-in shower. He'd already turned on the faucet in the shower when his lagging mind suddenly processed the significance of the image he'd seen just a minute earlier.

"Oh, fuck!" he grunted as he slowly turned off the water, leaned out of the shower, and straightened his back before turning around and walking back out into his bedroom. _You stupid fucking son of a bitch, _he growled at himself. _What the fuck did you do, you stupid fuck, to forget the one damn thing you were supposed to remember today? _He scowled as he wracked his mind for an explanation of how he could have managed to so colossally screw up this time. _How the fuck could I have forgotten? _He wondered if his brain was still hazy from the lingering effects of being the spell of Lorne's empathic demands. Angel nibbled the inside of his lip and noted that he did still feel a bit heavy-headed and slow-witted, like the way he vaguely remembered feeling when he was still human and had a bad head cold. _Dammit_. He blinked. _Wait a minute. What is today? Oh, shit, _he cursed silently. _Lorne and the lawyers decided that even though Halloween fell on a Friday this year, they wanted to have the party on Thursday the 30th to allow clients traveling in from out of town...some bullshit, bullshit, whatever...so, wait, if the party was tonight, or...ummm...last night...the 30th...wait, when was she supposed to come in again? _Angel sighed. _Dammit. Fuck me_.

She was sitting in the middle of his bed, her back resting against his headboard, her legs half bent as her hands rested casually palm down on top of the comforter. He couldn't help himself as he pursed his lips and furrowed his brow as he lingered in the doorway that separated his bathroom and bedroom.

For her part, her face was completely devoid of emotion, which Angel knew—after a hundred forty-odd years of reading her sometimes unreadable expressions—meant that, in fact, she was anything but. _ I am in such deep shit, _he thought. _I can see it in her eyes, in the way they get all glassy, with that little flash of blue. That particular shade of blue is usually a sign that things are never gonna end well for me. Fuck. I am in some serious kimchee here._

As he looked at her, Angel once again admired that she looked very pretty. But, then again, in the entire hundred and fifty years that he'd known her, she'd always been gorgeous. Tonight, it appeared, even though they hadn't seen each other much in the past ten years except for a few random, if intense, encounters besides their one three-day tryst at Halloween five years before. He remembered one particularly mind-ripping encounter, after arguing about his relationship with a certain blonde vampire slayer, whom Angel didn't want to think of by name just in case Brennan had developed some telepathic whammy that she hadn't told him about so he didn't get in any deeper trouble than he already had. They'd fought back and forth, volleying verbal salvo after verbal assault at one another until she'd given him a choice: take her, on _her _terms, or leave. Such an ultimatum had given him really little choice, and so Angel had taken Brennan against her stainless steel refrigerator, pounding into her as hard as he could while he drank her sweet blood from the pulse point at the base of her slender white neck. Judging by how things had already started, Angel began to wonder if tonight would be no different.

It had been some time since he'd seen her, and he could tell she'd changed the way she wore her hair since the last time he'd seen her. It was still the same auburn color that she'd favored since the day he'd met her after a boxing match that he'd won in Covent Garden more than a century earlier. However, it wasn't as wavy as it once had been. She'd obviously cut and straightened it, as her hair fell loosely about her shoulders with less curl to it than it once had. _Hmm, _he mused. _I kinda liked the curl_—_it had a certain wild, sexiness to it—but, sure, fashions change, I guess, especially for girls. She better never change the color, though—that wonderful reddish auburn. I love it. If she changed that, that would so fucking suck. I love that about her. I don't want it to ever change. _ Her creamy skin and piercing blue eyes were the same, however, as she sat looking at him with an arched eyebrow being the only indication of what she was thinking, and, in some more important ways, what she was thinking.

The low, square-cut neckline of her sleek A-line black dress accentuated her upthrust breasts while the bottom hem ended at mid-thigh. If he'd bothered to look at the floor, Angel would've seen a very sexy pair of three-inch stiletto black heels on his side of the bed. However, in that moment, the smoky grey and silver eye makeup accentuated her already mesmerizing blue eyes as they stared back at him with an unspoken question that made him squirm as his mind raced to answer it.

At last, he sighed and figured that a direct approach was the best one to take, given the blank, emotionless expression on her face. He felt her stare drilling into him as he stood there, feeling much like a condemned man watching the executioner tying the last coil on the noose and testing the hitch one last time before looping it over his head at the base of the gallows. Angel swallowed, withering a little beneath her gaze as her eyes watched him, silent and still, her face like marble, cold and rigid, with only the slightest twitch on the side of her jaw and the occasional blinking of her eyes giving any indication of the fury simmering underneath her blank expression.

"I'm so sorry, Bren—"

Raising her hand from the top of the bedspread, Brennan suddenly showed the first sign of emotion that she'd displayed since he'd entered the penthouse apartment. She didn't give herself the luxury of letting her eyes skim up and down his body as her simmering anger, that had continued to smolder for the couple of hours that she'd been waiting for him, threatened to bubble up in her chest at hearing his weak apology.

"Six months," she said sharply. "_Six months _we've been planning this...longer, actually, in some ways...and the best you can say is you're _sorry_?" She stared at him expectantly, waiting to see what else he'd say.

His brow furrowed again as he put his hand on his hip and said, "I-I...I'm really sorry, Bren...it's just that...I'm sorry...Fuck..." His stammering trailed off as he watched her jaw shift from side to side and he knew she was as angry as he could remember he being in a long time. "Look, lemme make it up to you, and—"

"Two hours," she suddenly gestured with her fingers. "I've been sitting here for over two hours...all by myself...waiting for _you_." She stopped and then reached to the side of the bed. She grabbed a rectangular piece of black plastic and threw it at him as hard as she could.

Angel didn't have to move too far to be able to move from the direction of what he saw was his own TV remote that she'd thrown at him as he heard it clatter to the wooden floor as it skated past him, and even as he concentrated on her anger, somewhere in the back of his male mind he hoped that she hadn't broken it.

"Bren, wait," he said, unsure in that moment what he was asking her to wait for. "What are you doing?" he asked.

He turned around with a furrowed brow to see his remote in the corner by the baseboard, the batteries rolling across the floor as he looked to see where the battery door cover had flown off and landed. After so many years, and having been attacked with all sorts of unusual hardware—most notably being clocked over the head with an ancient Egyptian jade vase from the 19th Dynasty of the New Kingdom period, never mind the numerous times she had threatened him with her ninth-century bejeweled silver dagger— he was surprised to see her resort to using such ordinary weaponry.

"By the way," she told him with a slightly pleased look on her face as she took some pleasure in being able to deliver unhappy news about what she knew to be one of his favorite sports teams, "in case you're wondering, the Flyers lost."

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Angel immediately became distracted and made a face. "Oh, no, really? Did you get a chance to catch any of the game? Was it any good? I was hoping that I caught a few minutes of the first period before all hell started to break loose downstairs, but I couldn't see the last two periods. Hackett wasn't doing that bad a job on goal at the start of the game, but the Devils have some nasty offensive capabilities. Fuck. Was it a good game? I bet it was. They really lost? Damn it, that sucks. They've been battling for first in the Atlantic Division, but they've dropped three of the last four games. The firm actually was able to get me tickets last week when they were in town to play the Kings at the Staples Center. I went with Gunn and Wes. The seats were friggin' awesome, but—"

His excitement in talking about one of his favorite sports was suddenly soured as he watched Brennan cross her arms and stared at him in a particularly antagonistic manner.

"You probably don't care about that right now," he finished lamely, swallowing heavily as his Adam's apple bounced when he wondered how much his unintentional ramble would further piss her off given how angry she already was.

"No, I don't really give a shit if the Flyers won or not," Brennan said, radiating hostility at him as she continued speaking. "I don't even like hockey, for fuck's sake. I grudgingly, with an emphasis on _grudgingly_, don't mind baseball if I have to pick a sport. But, the only reason I was watching the fucking Flyers/Devils game is because that was the only thing that was on beside professional bowling, a replay of the WCG-American Express Championship golf tournament, and a competitive poker tournament. So, it was really the lesser of the evils with which I'd been presented since I knew I'd be able to take some small measure of pleasure out of being able to tell you that the Flyers had lost. Of course, I only had to do that because I've spent the better part of two hours waiting for you, and the only channels that seem to come in on your damn cable package are every incarnation of every sports station that's broadcast worldwide so I've been stuck watching SportsCenter on loop for a while now. I couldn't even get the Weather Channel, for fuck's sake!"

Walking towards the bed, he gave her a sheepish look, trying to appease her as he said, "I'm sorry you had to deal with that," he said. "Poker shouldn't be on ESPN anyways. It's not like it's a sport." With a shrug, he added, "I know you don't really like sports." _I need to make sure to show her how to work the programming guide on the Dish Network 'cause there's like a thousand channels, _he thought. _And those are just the ones in English. I mean, even she should be able to find something to watch that she won't complain about too much. _Brennan arched an eyebrow and stared at him with a blank, unimpressed look. "I'll give you a lesson on how to navigate the TV menus later, okay? It's really not too hard once you get the hang of it—"

The look that Brennan shot him as he tried to tell her about what he'd teach her about working the TV guide stopped him mid-sentence._ Umm, okay, _he thought. _Not helping. Shit. _

"Don't worry about the weather, Bren," he said hopefully. "If worst comes to worst, I, uhh...well, you know you don't need to fly commercial back to D.C. if you don't want to, right? I mean...all I have to do is say the word, and the firm's jet can take you wherever you want to go."

Angel's eyes narrowed as he listened to his own words, and he shook his head quickly as he stood at the foot of the bed and looked at her with a soft smile on his lips and a twinkle in his warm chocolate eyes.

"Not that that matters much now, I know," he said sheepishly. "I-I...I mean, I've got to admit, I'm sorta surprised here that your flight managed to get into LAX because of the weather back east. When you texted me earlier and said your flight was delayed, well, I sorta got distracted by this stuff that was going on in the office, and I didn't think you'd get here—"

Rolling her eyes at him, Brennan said, "Uhh, hello? Almost five hundred year old witch here, Angel, in case you've forgotten. It's Halloween. Do you really think I need a ticket on United or American to get from D.C. to Los Angeles if I really wanted to fly tonight?"

He stared at her for a minute and then shook his head. "No, I guess not," he conceded. "Then, again, I know you may not believe this, but sometimes I almost forget what you are...what you can do since you usually lay off the mojo since you know I don't like it—unless you're pissed off at me...or horny...or both." He stopped and then asked, "So, do I even want to guess which one it is tonight?"

"And, I think that's also the answer to your other question," she told him with a sharp nod as she saw his eyes swivel over to the penthouse door and back to her again, smirking as she watched him blink and chew his lip as he appeared to be reconstructing how she managed to get through after-hours lobby security and two sets of access-controlled elevators without an RFID card and into his double dead-bolted suite without a key. "Multidimensional evil law firm or not, I've yet to find a security system that I can't beat if I'm really challenged, Angel, so don't be silly." Somehow, he knew, even as she said it, that it had taken her more effort to get into his penthouse undetected than Eve had earlier that day.

_What's it with women barging into my apartment today? _he grumbled silently to himself. _First Eve, then Bren. _Angel grunted and smirked, remembering how he'd managed to sneak into Brennan's terraced, wattle-and-daub home in Cheapside nearly a century and a half earlier and then promptly made himself at home there, slipping into her bed before she finally awoke to find him hovering over her, hard and horny, demanding her attentions. _Not that it's like I really mind that it was Bren who was barging in this time, but still. It's the principle of the thing. But Eve isn't Bren, that's for sure. That whole Eve thing creeps me out. Never mind what happened tonight, which is a whole 'nother kettle of fish entirely. I should've known it was gonna be a fucking weird day when she walked in on me in the shower. What. The. Fuck._

She stopped and paused for a moment as she tilted her head and took in the sight of him. The burnished orange shirt hung loose on his chest, completely unbuttoned, and for a minute, Angel thought that the flash of interest he saw in her eyes might mean the night was more salvageable than he'd thought just a couple of minutes earlier. As she tilted her head at him, she asked, "What happened to you?"

Angel tried his best to give her what he hoped was a suitably charming smile as he said, "Oh, you know...normal stuff that happens to the CEO and president of said multidimensional evil law firm when he gets roped into going to a Halloween party for the corporate types the night before the big holiday. Mystical enchantments, visiting demon nobility, drunken benders, kicking ass, taking names, etc. etc."

"Is that so?" she asked.

"Yup," he nodded. "Just a normal day in the office." He paused and then gave her a shyly sly smile. "You know, I've got something for you."

Brennan's eyes narrowed as she tilted her head and tried to discern if he was teasing her with a lewd reference or was being more sincere in his statement. After a moment, curiosity won out over suspicion as she asked, "Okay. What is it?"

Unable to help himself, Angel chuckled. "What? No guesses?"

"No," Brennan said, shaking her head. "I don't like guessing about things. It's extremely imprecise and tedious—"

"And yet you make me do it all the damn time," he said with a playful arch of his eyebrows.

Brennan paused and then chuckled. "Well, yes. I do. But, then again, when I'm the one asking the questions, I'm already in possession of the answers so I don't have to guess. Watching other people guess is something else entirely. I find it to be quite stimulating—"

"To watch me squirm," he interrupted her, nodding his head with pursed lips and a snort. "That's why you really do it, and you know it, Bren. You love it. You totally get off on watching me do the dufus shuffle, don't ya? I've been playing checkers to your chess for a century and a half, yet you never tire of shooting off one of your brainiac mental flares and watching my eyes glaze over as it burns its way to the ground before I even figured out what the hell you were talking about." He laughed. "That's okay. You don't want me for my mind. Just my muscle, right?" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Brennan bit her bottom lip to avoid the large smile that was threatening to crack her face. Instead, she merely responded, "I don't know what you're talking about in the slightest, Angel."

"_Riiiight_," he said with a faint snicker.

"So, you mentioned something about having something for me?" she asked, attempting to steer the conversation back to his earlier comment. "What is it?"

"You know what I have for you," he replied, his voice dropping a half octave as his brown eyes twinkled. "But you really gotta ask? It hasn't been _that _long, has it?" He laughed at his own joke. "What would you like me to give you, Bren, mmm?" Angel's eyes skim over her shapely form, pausing momentarily at the plunging neckline of her black before moving on down over her flat belly to the curve of her hips. "You know, 'cause, if you need some suggestions, I can help."

Angel arched an eyebrow as he watched for some indication—a curve of the lips, a twitch of the eye, a blink, anything—that she was going to play.

Seeing her eyes narrow with that skeptical look he'd seen her give him a thousand times before, when she remained silent but for her quizzically skeptical look, he turned around with a smirk and made his way into the apartment's galley kitchen as he called over his shoulder, "Hold on a second. It's in the kitchen. Be right back."

On the counter, he had a dozen white and yellow daffodils in a glass vase, and, glancing over briefly in the direction of the bedroom, he pulled one of the yellow daffodils out of the vase, then made his way back towards the bedroom.

He held the flower loosely in one hand as he leaned casually against the doorjamb. "Hey," he said with an easy grin. "I'm sorry I was late, but I'm glad you're here. It's been too long, Bren." Angel raised the long-stemmed bloom up to his nose, taking a whiff as he brought his gaze up to meet hers with a sly smile. "Here," he said, holding the flower out to her. "Consider it a peace offering. Penance for being late."

Brennan stared at the proffered flower, almost as if it were a strange specimen that she'd never seen before. She then lifted her gaze to meet his, and some of the hard skepticism that had colored her face during their teasing banter fell away. In its place, a softer—and more vulnerable—expression took it's place as she swallowed once and then asked, "You remembered?"

Angel cocked his head to one side and smiled. "Of course," he said with a slight lilt to his voice. "I remember everything about you, Bren. About _us_."

She swallowed again, her eyes flickering towards the flower, before she said. "Of course, I know that. It's ummm...well, it's just that it's been a long time since you gave me one of these."

He stood there, leaning against the doorframe and saw the openness in her expression, a gentleness and a vulnerability he had seen in her only a few times over the years, but which he adored when it surfaced. "I've been remiss," he said. "It's long overdue." He paused, glanced down at his bare feet, then looked up at her again. "Do you still like them?"

"They're my favorite flower," she answered simply.

Angel's eyebrows flew up and he grinned. "Oh good," he said, sighing with relief as he glanced over his shoulder towards the kitchen. "Because there's the rest of the dozen this one came from out there waiting for you."

"Where?" Brennan asked with another tilt of her head. "Where are they?"

He pursed his lips, trying to suppress his smile as his mind fluttered at her response. "Out here," he said. "Let me get them. One sec."

Angel disappeared into the dimly-lit living room and, a few moments later, came back with the vase and its myriad of white and yellow blooms, holding it in the crook of his arm as he absently plucked at the stems, rearranging the flowers so that the colors were more evenly distributed. Looking up at her with a bright gleam in his eyes, he asked, "Do you like them?" He turned the vase in his hand and, judging it to be suitable, held it out as he walked towards her.

Brennan scooted off of the bed and stood up. Taking the vase, she nodded with a small smile. "Very much so," she said. "Although, I assume that such flowers are easier to come by than they once were since this is California and not England. Much more sun and warmth and less of a need for expensive greenhouses I'd imagine."

"True," Angel said with an amused grin. "The best flowers in this part of the country come from Oregon, actually. There are some wonderful farms in the south-central part of..." His voice trailed off. "But you don't care about that," he chuckled. "And, to be honest, neither do I." He took a couple of steps closer and reached out, stroking his finger down the flared curve of the vase. With a smile, he said in a low voice, "You look really great tonight, Bren. I shouldn't be surprised, but everytime I see you, you look better and better."

She considered his words and then turned around, and set the vase on a nearby table. Coming back towards him, her pace made it clear that she had no fears about encroaching on his personal space as she said, "I would say you're just saying that, but since we both know it's highly unlikely that I traveled over three thousand miles just to say hello and go to the La Brea Tar Pits to do a bit of touristy sightseeing and that you are probably going to be getting laid at some point while I'm here, I suppose you're being sincere, hmmm?"

Angel's eyes widened in feigned hurt. "Lass, you wound me," he said, "to even suggest the faintest possibility that I'm being insincere." He paused, then added, "Because the fact of the matter, Bren, is that you look great. And while there may be some stickiness goin' on tonight, I daresay it's got nothin' to do with any tar pits."

Rolling her eyes at him, she shook her head, "Why am I not surprised that, despite the upgrade in your tailored wardrobe, living space, and corporate persona, you can still sling lewd double entendres and innuendo with the best of them?"

"Because you know me pretty well, lass," he said, letting his long-shed Galway brogue embroider the edges of his speech as a lazy grin hung on his face. "And, if I have anythin' to do with it, we'll be gettin' even more reacquainted tonight."

"So, is that your way of saying you missed me or just missed having sex with me?" she asked him, a bit of teasing still present in her voice as she sat back down on the bed and made herself comfortable again, telling him even if her words were teasing, that she didn't mind if either or both were true.

"Yes," he said with a snicker. "You know I've missed you," he said, his voice suddenly a bit more serious before lightening again. "I've been beside myself for a month thinking about getting to see you again. I'm missed you like crazy, woman."

As she saw him take another step towards her, she tilted her head and leveled an assessing look at him as she said, "So it really just was an honest mistake, you being late? What...did you just get the dates mixed up again or something?"

"Well," Angel said, biting the inside of his lip. "I did screw up the dates. The damn corporate Halloween party was originally supposed to be tomorrow, but...anyway...ugh." He shrugged and dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. "But I don't want to talk about that," he said with a smile. "I've had enough of parties and social obligations for now."

"So," Brennan asked, looking at him with another interesting light in her eyes. "You'd take offense then if I imposed on you with one more social obligation since I'd like to accept your apology and thank you for my flowers?"

"Oh," he said with a smile. "No, that's okay. I don't mind _that _kind of social obligation. I meant the hanging-out-with-people-you'd-rather-not-see-at-all-never-mind-spend-a-whole-evening-schmoozing-with kind of social obligation."

Brennan didn't have a verbal response aside from a small throaty chuckle. Slowly, she rolled over from where she sat on the bed and straightened her legs, giving him what she knew to be a good view of her ass as she moved towards the edge of the bed and slithered off of it. She could feel his stare on her body—something that had stayed consistent over the last hundred years. Where she was concerned, it didn't seem to matter much whether it was Angelus or Angel who looked back at her on the occasion when their paths had crossed, which, truth to be told, had been more frequently since she'd struck a bargain with him on the cold night she'd stumbled across him in Chicago almost eighty years before and had changed the nature of their relationship from that point forward. In either case, simply being in his presence made her body hum.

Angel licked his lips as she stood up and he saw the slight, soft curve where the top of her thighs met the bottom of her apple-shaped ass, and he felt a slight tug behind his navel as he noted the black lace trim of her panties. He shifted his weight from one hip to the other as he felt the raw tingle at the base of his spine that radiated through his limbs and signaled the onset of his growing arousal. _Sweet hell, lass, _he thought, making no effort to keep from leering at the line of her long, slender legs as she stood up. He blinked away the image of her lacy black panties and licked his lips again as he wondered how quickly he'd shuck them off as soon as his hands got anywhere near her hips. _Fucking crazy, _he smirked. _You drive me fucking crazy, lass_. He smiled at the way the hem of her black dress fell halfway down her thigh, hugging her curves just snugly enough to be suggestive and yet still tasteful. _And we're gonna fuck 'till neither of us can even remember our damn names_.

Once she was upright and stood on her bare feet, she prowled towards him with a sharp look in her blue eyes.

"Well, it's a good thing then that you don't mind dealing with a social obligation such as myself because getting time away from the Jeffersonian isn't _that _easy to do..at least, going away somewhere where everyone doesn't think they all know where I'm supposed to be," she said. "I've got three days before I have to be back—Halloween through the night of All Soul's. That's it, Angel, between your schedule and mine, I don't want to waste any more time. You can see, right, why I'm more than a tad irate that upon my arrival here, you were nowhere to be found?"

"You're right," Angel said with a crooked grin, dodging her question. "No sense wastin' another second, aye?" He winked as he unfurled his brogue again, knowing its lilting rhythm evoked in her the memory of the many delicious, decadent nights they shared over the century and a half of their acquaintance. "I'm all about makin' the most of every moment." He pressed his lips together in a firm line, a low hum sounding from his throat as he felt himself harden a little more with each step she took. "Especially if I can make it with you, lass."

As she stepped towards him, backing him slowly up against his bathroom door, Brennan's voice lowered and became distinctly softer as she said, "So, now that you're done being in charge for the evening, why don't we make up for some lost time and—"

Angel's face cracked with a wide smile as Brennan stalked towards him, and his nostrils flared with the smell of her—the warm, sweet and spicy smell of her that he'd grown to love and to recognize from a mile away in the nearly century and a half since he'd first met her, which scent was a bit muskier in light of her arousal and somewhat tangy as her anger had oozed from her pores. He felt a crackle at the base of his spine and a vague tightening in his gut as he felt her body heat come into contact with his own cool skin. He felt his stomach flip at having her so close to him again and for a few seconds, his excitement over being with his longtime lover again made him forget the surreal night he'd endured.

Brennan didn't even bother to finish her sentence as she herself felt a familiar flash of desire when he looked at her cause a slight flutter in her stomach that quickly made its way downward. Her heart rate subtly began to increase as she swiftly closed the distance between them as she pressed her body up against his and leaned in for a kiss with happy and desirous expectation. However, as soon as she opened her mouth to inhale what she'd hoped would be a deep breath of his smell, a tart and offensive scent wafted into her nostrils and her body tensed in revolt. She felt a twisting in the bottom of her stomach quickly extinguish what had been the beginnings of her arousal as she realized why she had caught an unexpected scent on him.

_How could he...? _a voice of righteous indignation echoed in her head, the only place where she let her emotions beside anger swirl as she processed the significance of her realization. _He...another woman? Tonight? He was with her and not me? Why? Why would he do this? Unless...he wanted to hurt me? After almost a hundred and fifty years, and after everything we've been through, he's decided that he's done with me? Or, does he just think he can do whatever he wants and that I won't care because of where he lives and who he works for now? Has Wolfram and Hart really changed him __that__ much? He can't be that naive...can he? Or...does he just not care anymore? Is that it? Is that what's really going on here? Fuck!_

Grabbing two fistfuls of his unbuttoned shirt, she suddenly pulled him towards her then slammed him hard back against the wall of his bathroom entryway. "You son-of-a-bitch!" she snarled, as her earlier anger returned and flashed in her eyes with a renewed and very healthy vigor. "You weren't...you weren't late because you were conducting any official business tonight, were you? The only business you had was...the reason you weren't here was because you were busy fucking someone else, weren't you?" Opening her eyes wide, she blinked at him and insisted, "That's what you were doing, weren't you?"

Angel winced as he withered under her hard stare, and the warm, flipping sensation he'd felt in his gut just seconds earlier suddenly left him with the sickening feeling that a trapdoor had just opened up below him. "Bren, wait," he said, his voice heavy with dread and contrition as he didn't even try to deny her question. His nostrils flared as he remembered the last time she'd rose up in fury after he'd come to her with the smell of another woman clinging to his skin—back in 1860, about a week after they'd first met back in London. _Sweet hell, _he thought. _Oh, man, she's pissed. Just like last time. But she better not get any ideas about throwing me off the balcony this time, because this is no first- or second-floor penthouse. Then again, if it were, that would sorta defeat the purpose...but, yeah. Forty-six stories—even as a vampire, I don't think I'll survive that fall. I probably wouldn't make it. My head'd probably pop off the second my sorry ass hits the pavement, which'd be enough to do me in. At the very least, I'll wish I was dead. And not just because I'm sure she's got other things she's gonna do to me in that so not-hot/so not-good way. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. _Cringing at the thought, he pleaded, "Come on, please. Let me explain..."

Rolling her eyes in disbelief, Brennan shook her head, her pale eyes flickering with a cold fire. "You've got to be kidding me," she spat. "I mean, I know I used to be a bit inflexible back when we first started this...well, this thing that's between us, that's always been between us. But, come on, Angel. This is a bit much, don't you think? Even Angelus had the smarter sense to schedule his fucks in a less tight schedule than this because he knew it was a dangerous thing to piss me off and that was before—"

She let her voice trail off as she met his level gaze, leaving her thought unspoken, even though they both knew that she was going to reference the point in their relationship that had changed _everything_ that had come after it once she'd given a part of her very self, her soul, into his keeping. Swallowing once, she vowed that she'd be damned if she was going to cry in front of him. Instead, she searched for and clung to her anger, knowing that if she was angry, he wouldn't see how much he'd hurt her.

"Well, you know what I mean," Brennan finally muttered as she looked away from him. "Because we're not talking about some female that coughed on you in the elevator, one of your co-workers that you patted on the back, or some client that you shook hands with, are we? It was much more than that. I can tell." She tilted her head as she muttered, "You'd think I'd have recognized the freshly fucked look on your face when you came in the door, but I guess I'm not used to seeing it when I don't look the same way around you. Goddamn it!" She stopped, pursed her lips again, and then shook her head as she added, "Whatever you were fucking an hour ago, I can still smell the half-demon taint on you..._ughhh_. You reek of it. God, I think I'm going to be sick."

She shook her head again, her lips twisted into a snarl of disgust as she moved away from him, and quickly walked over to the bed, bent down, and retrieved her heels. Balancing first on one foot, and then on the other as she hastily put on the heels, she grabbed her purse with a huff and was halfway out the door before she even heard him start to move behind her.

Angel blinked at her retreating form, momentarily surprised that she'd turn tail and walk out on him—after all the times he'd seen her lash out in anger, always with a stinging tongue-lashing and often with the one-two punch of a brutal verbal undressing combined with physical aggression—and, shaking off his puzzlement, muttered, "Oh, shit."

His brows furrowed as he realized she was reacting with more more than anger because she was more than angry. He heard it in the way her voice wavered. _She's hurt, _he thought. _She wouldn't...she's just leaving. She wouldn't do that if this weren't bad. She_—_Bren doesn't do that. She doesn't just give up and leave...unless dammit. I hurt her. I hurt her that badly, and now she doesn't want me to know that I hurt her. She doesn't want me to see her that way. So she's letting her anger flag fly. Fuck. That's not good. That's __definitely__ not good. It means this is bad. So very bad. More bad than I even thought...which was very, very bad. Not good. So not good. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Dammit, Angel. You stupid son of a bitch._

Sighing, he moved quickly, following after her as he called out, "Bren, please, I wasn't...that is, I didn't...I-I just...well, it's not like I chose her over you, Bren. I didn't. I swear to God I didn't. I never even had a choice, but if I did, you know I'd never choose anyone but you. It's just that—"

"Go away, Angel," she called over her shoulder. "I'm leaving so you can get back to whatever half-demon slut you were fucking before I interrupted you. My apologies."

"Bren," he pleaded, recognizing her tone as he approached her from behind and reached for her shoulder. "Come on, don't...it's not what you think." He swallowed nervously as he felt the pain radiating off of her in waves. He remembered the furious argument that they'd had a couple of years earlier when she'd railed at him about his relationship with the young Slayer, and how she'd been so livid she'd very nearly used her magic to rescind her invitation to allow him into her dwelling. He felt that same hurt emanating from her now, so much so he swore he could smell it, souring the otherwise sweet scent of her. "It's not...I know you think I'm an ass but it's not what it looks like. It's...please, Bren. Please stay. I didn't...you're the one I want...not...not her. You know I..." His mouth hung open as he struggled for words. He squeezed her shoulder gently and said in a deliberately calm, even voice, "Look, you came all this way, so please at least let me explain?"

"What's there to explain, Angel?" she said, suddenly turning around on her heels and batting his hand from her shoulder. He knew from the way she slapped his hand away that she was more hurt than angry. Were she angry, she would have hit him with something other than the back of her hand. They stood there, just staring at one another, for a couple of seconds before her eyes flashed and she snapped, "You were busy, I interrupted. End of story."

"No," he said with a slow, almost sad shake of his head. "You didn't interrupt You didn't interrupt _anything_, Bren. I swear. I just...look...please. Let me—" He looked away and sighed, his mind swirling as he felt the situation, and Brennan's rising anger, spinning rapidly out of his control. "I just—"

Taking the opportunity to cross her arms, she thrust out her hip as she stared at him for a few seconds before she said, "Fine. Explain. Or, at least, try to because I can't see how all of your stuttering in any way equates to your way of trying to tell me that less than an hour ago you _weren't _fucking another woman?"

"Umm, no," he said, placing his hands on his hips as he stared down at his bare feet. Angel felt a tightening in his chest and saw her pale eyes smoldering as he looked up at her from beneath a firmly knit brow that hung low and hard over his eyes. "I mean, I _was_," he said lamely, "but—"

"Fine," she said with a hard, sarcastic edge to her voice and she leveled a blistering stare at him, apparently having heard all she needed to hear. "Fine, then it appears as if my original assessment was correct then. You _were _busy fucking some cheap date because I suppose you lost track of time, weren't you? Thought you had a few more hours to fuck around since you thought I wasn't going to be here until later and so you decided to have some fun before I got here? I mean, what? Were the flowers even for me? Or, were they really for her?" She saw his eyes widen a bit in surprise at her question, but she didn't bother to wait for a response. "In either case, I don't care. The bottom line is, you were with another woman while I was here twiddling my thumbs waiting for you!" She stopped and then said, "You know, I'm sure I could apply some anthropological axiom here that would be quite appropriate even if you are a vampire, but since the significance of it would probably be lost on you, I think I'll save my breath."

Sighing heavily, Angel shook his head. "I think I liked you better before you started messing around with all this anthropological shit," he muttered. "I don't remember you being like this before you decided to start digging in the dirt. Lording me over with all of this hyperintellectualized crap just to make me feel like an idiot." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, his brow furrowed again and he frowned, sorry that he had let the frustrations that had been building all night get the better of him. He rubbed his eyes and took a step towards her. "Bren, look, it's—" He had barely opened his mouth to speak when Brennan's eyes again lashed with rage and she cut him off.

"Stop it," Brennan interrupted him. "Just stop it." She paused and then huffed, "You know what? I _have_ changed, Angel, just like you have. But, you know what the main difference is between us? I know what I am. With me, you see what you get and get what you see. At least I have the ability to be honest and not hide behind excuses like my job and whatever other goddamn cop-out you want to use to try to rationalize the fact that you not only fucked up in a major way, but you were caught, and I'm calling you on it." She stopped, her eyes darted past him towards the bedroom, and then she muttered, "I suppose I should just be glad that I didn't walk in on the _coup de gras_. I'm sure you thought you were being quite considerate by at least fucking whatever trollop you found to dip your wick in someplace other than the bed where you'd planned on fucking me in tonight. I suppose you think I should be thank you for that bit of thoughtfulness on your part, right?"

"So wait," he said, taking a step closer. "So you're suggesting I've got some kind of revolving door to my bedroom? That's B.S., and you know it." He paused and then shook his head, "Come on, Bren. I guess I'm kind of confused here. I mean, setting aside whether what happened tonight was something I even wanted, what gives you the right to call me out about being with another woman? It's not like you've been living a life of strict celibacy yourself these last eighty years."

Brennan pursed her lips for a minute, and then sighed, "You're right, Angel. You aren't my only lover. Just like I'm not yours. But this isn't just about the fact that you had sex with another woman. The big thing that really pisses me off the most is that you had sex with another woman when, as we'd agreed, you were supposed to be with me. And, that, I'm sure you'll agree is something I've _never _done to you. I've never pushed you over to fuck another man while you were waiting for me. And, that's why I'm pissed here."

Angel closed his eyes for a second and sighed, trying to tamp down his mounting frustration before he said something he would regret for at least the next two centuries. "Look, okay? I get your points. I do...but if you really wanted to make certain that something like this never happened to either one of us, then there's a simple way to handle it."

"Meaning?" she asked.

"Well," he responded. "It's not like we're in a traditional relationship here. We never really laid down any ground rules about how this exclusively non-exclusive thing was gonna work."

"I didn't know we needed to," Brennan said.

"Well, I'm just saying," He covered his eyes with his hand and rubbed them with the heel of his palm, sighing heavily. "This thing of ours is so confusing I don't know what to call it or to know what it is. But, if we did, then yeah, I think it would make things easier for us both. It would let us know exactly where we stand with one another."

"You want to do that?" Brennan asked, her eyes widening a bit. "You really want to have _that_ discussion...right now...of all the times we could chose to have it?"

"Fuck, Bren," he muttered. "I'm trying here. So, yeah, I do since we've never really had _'the Talk_.'" He paused when he saw a look of confusion crease her brow. "You know, the 'what are we' talk?" He paused and shrugged. "Not because _I _haven't wanted to. I mean, because...well, to be honest, I've thought about it. A lot, actually, over the years. But...well...I never brought it up, Bren, because, to be honest, I didn't think you were ready to...you know, to give this thing of ours a name. To set some rules. To be clear about what we are to one another. I know I want to, because that would make my life so much easier if we were clear about what each of us can or can't do. But it's all on you Bren. You've gotta be ready finally to come clean about us and what this thing is before we can do that. Then, if you did that, we could see how things go and then maybe things like this fuck up with Eve wouldn't have happened, or at least—"

Although he wasn't quite sure what he'd done wrong, as her eyes continued to widen, he knew he'd fucked up again and somehow inserted his foot into his mouth. His suspicions were confirmed when Brennan said, "Don't you dare. Don't you fucking dare, Angel!"

"What?" he blinked at her in confused surprise. "What did I say?"

"You are a selfish and self-centered bastard," she muttered at him, her voice taking on an even harder edge as she spoke. "I can't believe this. You're actually trying to place the blame for the fact that you fucked another woman when you were supposed to be with me at _my _feet? Seriously?" Shaking her head, she clenched her fists by her side as she said, "Then, you asshole. This isn't all about you, Angel. It's not just about what you want and what you need. I know you think it is, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that since you've always thought the world revolved around you, but fuck. It's not my fault you fucked Eve, and I have every goddamn right to be majorly fucking pissed about it, you bastard!"

"Bren," he tried to cut in and get a word in edgewise with her but failed miserably when he saw that she'd misconstrued what he said. "Please. I—"

"Oh, please," she muttered. "Spare me. Because if I have to hear one more goddamn word about how tonight is all my fault, I think I'm going to seriously have some type of spontaneous aneurysm burst in my brain from the sheer lack of incredulity and ludicrousness of such a statement." Unable to believe what she thought he'd said, and because he'd hurt her—whether intentionally or not—she lashed out and wanted to cut him in at least the same manner, if not worse and so chose the one thing to bring up that she knew would cause him pain. "You know what, Angel? _You _may've liked _me _better before I became an anthropologist, but _I_ think I liked _you _better before you got the soul," she told him.

Angel stood there for a couple of seconds, his mouth hanging open in shock as he squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, quite sure that he hadn't actually heard her say what he thought she did. But as he replayed her words in his head like an old newsreel, he felt his chest and shoulders tighten, the muscles of his forearms harden with unsprung tension and his fingers curl into tight fists. He was so furious, the first words out of his mouth weren't words at all, but a sharp growl that sounded from behind gritted teeth.

"What the fuck, Bren!" he snarled, his cool skin flushing with anger. "I can't believe you, woman. Why the fuck would you say something like that, after..." He shook his head and jutted his lower jaw out as his brown eyes darkened to the color of pitch. "After everything you and I have been through."

"Why would I say that?" she repeated his question. "Because, it's true! At least I could always count on Angelus' hedonism. When he wanted to fuck me, he knew the terms, and either agreed to them or didn't. It was nice and simple. At least then I didn't have to worry about this stupid prevarication that you've taken on since the Gypsies cursed you."

"Okay, wait a fucking minute," he grunted as he closed the distance between them and shot his arm out, slamming the door shut with a loud clank that echoed through his spartanly-furnished room as he glared into her angry, glimmering eyes. Angel felt every muscle in his body tense as her words sank into the layers of his mind and took root there. "Now that's a low fucking blow," he said, his hands clenching into fists so tight that his fingernails dug into his palms. "That's a low fucking blow, Bren, and you know it." He gritted his teeth and growled in his throat, then took a deep breath as he shoved his hands into his pockets with a sharp huff.

"You know," he continued. "You make it seem like you're the one taking the high road here. All straightforward and honest. 'What you see is what you get,' huh? What a crock of fucking shit. You know what? All I see right now is a grown woman acting like a petulant child. Pitching a little temper tantrum, calling me names." He leveled a hard stare at her. "'I never liked you, anyway'," he said, raising the pitch of his voice in imitation of a whiny child. "For fuck's sake, Bren. I mean, really. I know you're hurt and upset right now, I do. I get that. I know I fucked up, and I want to make it right. But if and until you're willing to let me do that, it doesn't mean you need to act like an immature bitch. You know you're better than that. So why would you even say something that stupid?" He lifted his hand to the back of his head and ran his fingers through his spiked hair in clear frustration. "Why would you even bring him up?"

"If you recall," Brennan responded sharply, "I wasn't the one who brought up how one of us used to be. You were the one who made allusions to a time in my life when, may I remind you, had I been the woman tonight that I was then, I would've taken my silver dagger and probably gutted you just for fun before I staked you through the heart because of the goddamn insult after goddamn insult that you keep thinking you have some right to hurl at me and expect me to take like I'm some sad Oliver Twist wannabe who's holding her bowl out and asking 'Please, Angel, sir, can I have some more?' Because, we both know that the woman I used to be wouldn't have put up with about five minutes of the shit you've put me through tonight, Angel. She wouldn't have done that, and we both know it."

"Yeah, well," Angel shrugged. "You may not be the same woman you used to be, and I _am _glad for that, okay, no matter what asinine comments I may spew in anger, Bren. But, we also both know that if I'm glad you're not the woman you used to be, you should be fucking _ecstatic _that I'm not the man I used to be."

"Oh, and why's that?" she retorted as she thrust her hip out at him and stared him down. "You think I wouldn't find some way to handle Angelus if he ever tried to use the part of my soul that you have in your keeping against me?"

"No," he said with a little shake of his head. "I'm not even talking about that, Bren, although you're a fool if you don't think he'd eventually get around to trying to see how he could use that to his benefit."

"Really?" Brennan muttered. "You think _I'm _the fool here where Angelus is concerned? Because, do I really need to remind you, once again, that I'm not some teenaged Slayer twit that doesn't know how to handle the demon inside you?"

"I don't think you understand what I'm saying here, Bren," Angel said, a hard edge to his voice. His lower jaw shifted forward as he leveled a dark stare at her. "Angelus had been trapped inside of me for almost a hundred years—almost double that time if you want to be completely accurate and count the time I spent in hell. But let's not complicate things too much, so we'll just say it's been a century during which he'd tasted the sweet tingle of human blood just a few times. A hundred years he's lain inside of me, for the most part silent and ignored, while I took only what was offered to me, and not a bit more."

"Aren't you forgetting something?" she asked as she nodded at him with a small smirk on his face. "I seem to recall that Angelus got paroled a couple of times."

"Yeah," Angel nodded. "He did. Twice in the last six years. Four months the first time, fifty days the second."

Brennan looked at him for a minute and then rolled her eyes. "If this is another chance for you to tell me that I need to send the erstwhile Slayer a thank-you card for keeping Angelus occupied so that I wouldn't have to be bothered to see if I could still handle him, save it, Angel. It's not happening this time anymore than it did the first time you tried to get me to believe that raft of bullshit."

"Believe it or not," Angel told her. "Buffy didn't have anything to do with why Angelus didn't come knocking on your door last year. Although, believe me, if he'd been free just a little bit longer before Willow managed to free my soul from where Cordy had stashed it and restored it, you definitely would've gotten the chance to test your little theory about how well you could handle Angelus in the twenty-first century, Bren."

"Oh?" Brennan asked with an arching of her eyebrow even as she knew Angel was trying to bait her. "And, why's that precisely—since I know you want me to ask?"

He cocked his head to one side and took a long, deep breath. "Angelus never asked for anything," he said grimly. "He _took_. He took what he wanted, when he wanted it, from whomever he wanted, and he took as much of it as he wanted, and when he was done with whomever he'd taken it from, he was done and that person could consider themselves lucky if they lived to tell the tale."

"I know that already," Brennan muttered. "There's nothing new in that. Angelus is as Angelus always was. Tell me something I don't know, Angel, or get to the fucking point."

"Okay, Bren," Angel nodded at her. "How's about this then? Why don't I get to the fucking point _and _tell you something you don't know?"

"Fine," she responded. "Fine by me. Dazzle me, Angel."

"After a hundred years inside of me, and sharing that space inside my soul with yours for most of the decades of that century—even if he never really could understand what it was or why it was important—do you know what Angelus wanted more than anything?" Angel asked her. "Huh? Do you?"

Brennan shrugged noncommittally in response to his question, clearly unimpressed by what he'd said so far.

Angel, however, knew the seriousness of his point even as he raised his chin, blinked, and answered his own question. "He wanted _you_," he told her.

Laughing at what she took to be his grand reveal, Brennan responded, "That's hardly a surprise. Nor would it be the first time he wanted me. So?"

"So," he said, his voice low as he clarified his earlier statement. "So...there was a bit more to it than just fucking you, Bren."

"Really?" she blinked at him, still unimpressed. "And, what's that?"

"He wanted you the way he'd never had you before, in ways you'd never offered yourself up to him, not in all the thirty-eight years you knew him and shared your bed with him," he replied.

Angel took a couple of steps forward, standing so close to her that he could feel her warm breath on his chin.

"It's true. He wanted to fuck you, Bren. But it was more than just about you spreading your legs and him pounding out an epic grudge fuck. He wanted to fuck the living daylights out of you. He wanted nothing more than to throw you against the wall, jerk your skirt or dress or whatever other bit of female finery you had off that beautiful, round, juicy, delicious ass of yours. Then he wanted to rip your panties off—hard enough that those pretty string bikinis that you've favored in the last few years would've left angry red marks on your skin, right there on your curvy hips, before they gave way with a tearing sound that just would've made him even harder than he already was."

He stopped for a time, starting to feel himself get turned on again as he painted the picture for her. He gritted his teeth, unable to ignore the dark, burning sensation of want that hummed inside of him, tugging at his groin from deep in his gut as he tried to rein in control of himself. As ever, he tried to push the jeering voice in his head away even as his jaw tensed and he swore he could feel an unexplainable heat singe the fine hairs on his arms. The jeers eventually dulled to their normal whisper until only the normal mocking laugh remained echoing faintly in the foreground of his consciousness.

After a minute, he grunted quietly and continued. "Angelus is a skilled lover—I know you remember how good he was and the way he'd make you scream his name when he got you all the way up to the point you were about to come like a fucking dam breaking, then he'd stop, pull out and turn you around, then slowly start up again and bring you back again, a few times until you thought you'd lose your goddamn mind. Remember that?"

"I remember," she muttered at him. "I remember everything, Angel. Unlike some people, I can't forget the past even if I really, really want to. But, again, I remind you—I'm more than perfectly capable of handling myself...against Angelus or anyone else who thinks he could just show up, knock on my door, and expect me to fall down so he could fuck me because he'd finally penciled me into his schedule."

"You think he would've been nice?" Angel snorted. "All charming and suave and debonair, bringing you daffodils and calling you 'lass' to charm his way into your bed, Bren? Because if that's what you think, I can tell you, you're wrong...dead wrong. That's not how this was gonna go. He wasn't gonna wait to see if you were wet and ready. Fact is, he could give a flying fuck whether you were ready or not, or how wet you were. He wanted you, and he was gonna have you, and he was so hard from wanting you, he was gonna be like carbon steel, so it didn't matter whether you were wet or ready or what you wanted. This would've been about him, and not you. Angelus and what Angelus wanted were all that would've mattered. So, you know what? Do you know what he would've done next?"

He leaned in and whispered the next words in her ears so that she alone could hear him.

"He was gonna push your face into that wall, push those legs of yours apart with his knee, and he was gonna ram himself into you as far as he could go. Then he was gonna fuck you as hard as you've ever been fucked, but he was never gonna touch you the way I know you like to be touched to get you wet and slick and ready before pushing you over the edge. Nope, 'cause he didn't care whether you came or not. He was gonna fuck you until you were screaming for him to stop, then he was gonna come inside of you barely waiting a minute before he whirled you around and threw you down on bed. Your voice would still be hoarse from your screaming when he'd straddle your face and make you suck his dick until you made him hard again."

Angel hesitated, then shook his head. "No," he said. "That's not right. It wouldn't have been a question of you sucking his dick. Nope—he'd have fucked your face until he was hard as a fucking rock again, and he was tired of your mouth. Having already greased the skids, so to speak, by coming in you the first time, the second time he was gonna fuck you and it might've been a bit less painful for you, but since he still wasn't gonna do anything to make you feel good, he'd just as soon as you resist him, since it'd make your already tight-as-all-fuck pussy even tighter, which was just as well for him. He'd spread your legs as wide as he could and fuck the hell out of you again, only this time, he was going to take from you what you never gave him...only me. That second time, he was gonna feed on you while he was fucking you."

Angel hesitated for a moment, a wicked grin tugging at the corners of his mouth as he saw Brennan's cheeks flush.

"Yep," he said with a sardonic laugh. "He wouldn't have stopped for a minute the furious pace at which he was fucking you. He'd have leaned over with his game face on and sank his teeth into you, and he'd have picked up a bit of his come from where it'd dribbled down your legs before and he'd use it to lube up that tight, hard little clit of yours before he starting rubbing you off. That's right, but not because he wanted you to come, just in case you were wondering, but because he wanted you to taste as sweet as possible when he sucked you to the very edge of death. He'd be fucking your pussy the whole time, rubbing your clit, and driving you crazy with pleasure because when a woman's like that, she tastes so good, better than ever."

He hesitated again as he searched her face for a sign. His nostrils flared as he inhaled the smell of her ever-increasing want, but he needed something else—something else, a clear signal of some kind—to confirm what he knew in his gut to be true: that she wanted him, and that she wanted to be taken by him. Angel saw a glimmer in her pale blue eyes, a bright flash that came and went in an instant, but revealed more than just a subtle flicker of interest on her part.

"Yeah, your blood would start tasting sweeter and sweeter the closer and closer you got to coming, and the moment before you came, you'd taste like fucking ambrosia," he continued, becoming enraptured himself by the picture he was painting. "Then he'd let go of you with his teeth, having damn near drained you dry, and he'd finish fucking you, and explode in you again. And he'd do it to you all night long, pounding into you and shooting his load into you until you couldn't walk without a sore ache nor opened your mouth and so much as whimpered a single word without your throat hurting from how much you'd screamed."

Angel swallowed, then shook his head as he reached down in the narrow space between her back and his waist and adjusted his slacks, trying to give himself a bit more room as he felt his trousers becoming uncomfortably tight as he continued his diatribe. "Nope, the Angelus you'd have gotten had he gone after you like he'd wanted to when he was on the loose that second time—it wasn't the Angelus you'd come to enjoy as your lover for nigh forty years back in England. This was an Angelus starved for at least a hundred years of sex and blood and the glee of causing pain and the tangy smell of human fear, and he wasn't stopping until he'd gotten every bit of what he'd missed those hundred years or more, and he'd gotten it from you...especially since he was so pissed off that he got put back in the cage the first time before he could make a go at finding you. Had he gotten a bit more time, and gotten out of LA and away from all that bullshit with the Beast, all bets would've been off. So don't tell me you think you could have handled him. You have no fucking idea, Bren. No fucking idea at all."

She tilted her head, coming to realize that he'd almost molded his entire body against hers as he'd painted the lewd picture of what Angelus would've tried to do to her if he'd had the chance. She could feel his hard-on pressing into the softness of her ass through the thinness of her dress's material. Knowing that by allowing him to remain in contact with the warmth of her body and letting him stay close enough that he'd be drowning in her scent, she didn't pull away so that such sensations could be a punishment in themselves if she wanted them to be. Turning her head ever so slightly, she let her pink tongue dart out of the corner of her mouth as it swept across the full arc of her bottom lip that seemed even more pouty than normal because of the red lipstick she still wore.

"You know what, Angel?" she breathed. "I have more ideas than you've ever given me credit for."

"Is that so?" he snorted. "And what are you trying to say? I'm not creative enough for you?"

"I'm saying that," she told him. "I have a pretty good idea that the reason your cock is stiff and pressing into my ass right now doesn't have shit to do with that little spiel you just rattled off about Angelus and what he wanted to do to me. No, I think it has less to do with him and more to do with what's going on between me and the ensouled vampire who's been hard for at least the last ten minutes."

Jerking his hips into her backside, he leaned his chin over her shoulder and said, "Really? So, you're saying you think I wanna take you like that? I can smell you, Bren, and it's no less obvious to me how fucking horned up _you _are than my hard dick is pressed up against your tight little ass. You're dripping already. So tell me, is this your way of saying that I'm forgiven after all and that _you _want it rough? Rougher than I've been giving it to you?"

She laughed at him in that moment, a deep throaty laugh as she obviously found merriment in his words. "First, you're deluded if you think I'm going to let your prick anywhere near my hole tonight, whether my body chooses to respond to your efforts or not. Second, as I recall, I've been the one who's spent the last eighty some-odd years goading you into letting loose and not treating me like some goddamn bit of spun Venetian glass that has to be coddled and coaxed into an amenable mood when it comes to fucking, Angel. I've never been the one who's had a problem with facing my darkness or yours, for that matter, but—" She suddenly spun on him and once she was turned around and facing him, she jabbed her index finger hard into the muscle of his upper chest as she said, "You're fucking crazy if you think I'm going to let you ever have the opportunity to come at me like that ever again. Fucking me and/or sucking on me has always been a privilege where I'm concerned, Angel. And, you know what? I think with what bullshit you've pulled tonight, it'll be a cold day in hell before you ever get that privilege back."

"First off, Bren," he growled. "What do you mean 'privilege,' huh? Hell, you make it seem like I'm the only one who gets off on the fuck-and-suck routine, and you sure as hell know that's a total crock of shit. You've admitted that the best sex we've ever had was when I was laying into you, top and bottom, with my fangs on one end and my cock on the other while I was draining you dry at the same time I was filling you up. So, get a grip." He narrowed his eyes, then added, "And about the 'bullshit' tonight, you haven't yet considered hearing my side of what happened. You don't care. You're pissed and that's all that matters, right? You could give a fuck about my side of the story, which is pretty much par for the course, isn't it?"

She widened her eyes as she stared at him in abject disbelief. "You know that's not true, you selfish, self-centered, stupid bastard!" she snapped at him. "How can you even—" She bit her lip, her nostrils flared, and she tried again. "Why do you even think—" Again, her words choked in her throat as she left her sentence unfinished a second time. Forcing herself to take another breath, she tried for a third time as she said, "We were always supposed to be equals, remember, Angel? But, we're only equals because I let us be. Now, I know you and your huge fucking male ego like to forget that part. But, here's something that's really important that you shouldn't forget. Ready? Because here it is. You're delusional if you think that because whatever fucking pseudo-cookie baking demon tart gave it to you that way so that you've suddenly got rough sex on the brain means you can come and enjoy that privilege with me...well? It's not happening, Angel. So maybe you should see if you still have the slut's phone number to help you out with your little problem there, because I sure as fuck am not going to do a damn thing about it."

Angel growled in frustration at the infuriating woman before him, then looked up at the ceiling and sighed as he tried to tamp down his own emotions. "Cookie baking demon tart?" he grunted. "What are you talking about?" He paused as he saw her anger recede a bit and the flash of vulnerability that she let come through her eyes immediately diffused some of his rapidly mounting frustration. "Look, alright? I know, after what's happened so far tonight that it may not seem like it, but I don't want anyone but you, Bren. Okay? I just want you. Just you."

"Well, if that's true," Brennan said, "you've certainly got a funny way of showing it."

"Look," he sighed. "Have I made mistakes over the years, letting myself get tangled up with other women, because I was thinking with my dick or maybe just being prideful or even letting myself get caught up in the consequences of an empath demon's insomnia? Yeah. Okay. I did. And I'm sorry, alright? You and I have been amazing together for a hundred forty-odd years, Bren. You've been a part of me for eighty years. You saved my life and made me who I am today. No one can replace you, Bren. And I wouldn't ever try to replace you." He paused, his voice dropping both in pitch and in volume. "You know that, Bren. And I'm sorry about...about what happened tonight, believe me...and...if you'll let me explain, and if you're really willing to listen, then I will. Because you know what you mean to me. You know that. We wouldn't still be here, you and me, after this many years, if we didn't mean something to each other. If what we have wasn't still something incredible. Right?"

She swallowed heavily once and then said in a very small voice, "You were with her...instead of me. I-I...you threw me over for some second-rate fuck."

"Bren," he said, his voice even softer than before. "It wasn't like that. It didn't happen that way, and I didn't want it to—"

"You know how I feel," she interrupted him, her voice rising sharply. But, even as she said the words, she chewed down on the inside of her mouth to stopped herself from finishing yet another sentence. She bit down hard on her lip to keep from finishing the sentence in the way in which they both knew she'd originally planned to complete it. "You're damn right that I'm pissed off because I'm jealous because it really hurts me to know that you were banging some slut—that's apparently, what, some kind of law firm office perk?—downstairs when I was up here ready, willing, and waiting..._for you._"

"Look," he told her, the bit of the edge that had been in his voice earlier having all but disappeared. "Bren, believe it or not, there's actually a really good explanation as to why I was down there with her instead of up here with you...especially when there's no damn doubt that if I could've made the choice, I _would've _been you and not Eve." He spat the other woman's name in disgust as he thought about what had transpired in his office downstairs and hoped Brennan could see how repulsed he was at what he did.

Brennan considered his words for a moment and then asked as her voice became a bit more soft once again, "You're not making that name up, right? This isn't you trying to be metaphorical in some religiously allegorical way?"

"No," he groaned, cringing as the very mention of her name made his stomach turn. He felt revulsion at the idea that he'd put himself inside of her and that her mouth had clasped his own. _Fuck. I'm gonna have a hard time forgetting that one, and that's saying something, _he thought. _Ugggh. _He felt his arousal wilt a little as the bile bubbled up in his throat . "Her name actually _is _Eve. She's my liaison to the Senior Partners at Wolfram and Hart and—"

She took a step towards him and lifted her hand to his chest. Gently, but with a firmness in her efforts, she lifted her index finger and tapped on his chest. "How many times?" she questioned him.

"What?" Angel coughed, wishing that he didn't know what she was really asking him, but fairly certain he knew exactly what she meant. _Oh, Bren—why are you doing this? _he asked silently. _What are you doing to me here? To yourself? This isn't the way to handle things. God...just let me explain...but not like this. No good will come of this. Don't you understand that? Please don't do this. _He blinked but did not answer.

"I asked, how many times did you fuck her?" Brennan clarified. She leaned in towards the crook of his neck—her hair brushing his chin as she did so—and took a deep breath just to make certain that what she already knew to be true was, in fact...well, fact. "I can smell her on you still...strongly enough that this wasn't just a quick fuck up against a wall somewhere."

"Uhhh, no," he conceded. "We, uhhh, that is—we didn't, ummm, well..."

Angel closed his eyes and sighed. As he sensed her emotions rolling off of her in waves, he recalled standing hunched over in a small subterranean tunnel underneath a German fortification, soaked in his own sweat, covered in mud and grime, as he'd laid high-explosive charges every twenty yards and ran detonating cord between them, linking them together in a daisy-chain, during World War I. Working by the light of a single candle held over his shoulder by a bantam-sized coal miner from Cumberland, he knew one poorly-considered or clumsily-executed move would have set off tens of thousands of pounds of explosives and blown them both to smithereens. Slowly opening his eyes again, he saw Brennan glaring at him, her square jaw rigid as her pale eyes glimmered with a cold, smoldering fire, and he knew he had to tell her something—enough to reassure her somehow—but not too much that would push her over the edge.

"How...many...times?" Brennan asked again as she pulled away from him and tilted her head so that he could see her normally crisp blue eyes had hardened into a dullish grey.

"Twice," he finally choked. _Fuck, _he cursed silently. _She made me blink. She fucking made me blink. Shit. _He saw a her hard-staring eyes flicker for a moment as she registered his admission. _Dammit. _He remembered crouching outside the gaping maw of the mining tunnel at Beaumont Hamel and waiting for the fuse to burn and light off the daisy-chained explosives. He arched an eyebrow at her surprisingly contained and most calm response. _Why isn't she blowing a gasket?_

"Angel..." Brennan ground out, the warning clear in her tone.

"I swear," he told her. "It was just twice for me...but, uhhh, well, I think there might've been an extra one in there for her." His brow wrinkled as he struggled to remember. "I think."

Stepping away from him, Brennan remained silent as her eyes scanned the outer room. When her gaze fell upon the haphazardly folded black pinstripe suit jacket that he'd randomly tossed on one of the chairs as he'd trudged into into the bedroom earlier, her curiosity was piqued. Not saying another word to him, she walked over and picked the jacket up up. Bringing the garment to her nose, even though she knew what she would find, Brennan took a deep breath, inhaling the garment's scent. At first, the soothingly familiar smell of Angel—menthol, sandalwood, and a faintly metallic tinge—greeted her nose. Then, almost as if it were a part of a guerrilla sneak attack, a cloyingly and sickly sweet female odor assaulted her nostrils. When she sniffed the pungent watermelon and patchouli mixture, she had to refrain from gagging as she balled the jacket in her hand and tossed it as hard as she could at Angel.

"She was wearing this at some point, wasn't she?" Brennan asked him, her voice dangerously cutting as she spoke.

Thinking back to when Eve had pulled the jacket on when they'd first been interrupted by Wesley, Fred, Lorne, and Gunn, he could only nod wordlessly.

"Never wear that again," Brennan ordered him. "As a matter of fact, burn it."

Pursing her lips, she stared at him for another minute, making certain he knew that she was deadly serious and then suddenly turned around and walked back into his bedroom.

Angel couldn't help but follow as he jogged after her and was somewhat surprised when he saw her bypass the bedroom and head straight to the bathroom. His brow creased as he watched her walk past his bed without a backward glance and into the bathroom. He hesitated, standing at the foot of his bed, puzzled. Angel raked his fingers through his hair and scratched his head, wondering what she was up to but having an idea that, whatever it was, it wasn't probably good. _No. I don't see how this could be any good. So if it's not any good then that means it's gotta be bad, right? Damn, that woman...you're killing me, lass. You're always keeping me on my toes, huh, Bren? _he smirked. _Now, for your next trick..._

"Bren?" he asked, close on her heels and wincing as he realized that his fight with the huge, brutal manifestation of Lorne's subconscious left him a bit more battered and bruised than he had at first realized.

He heard her making very familiar sounds as he heard her stiletto heels click against the gray slate floor of his bathroom. He saw her round the corner and step into his walk-in shower, and he knew by the way she extended her arm that she was turning on the faucets. When the water was turned on as high and to as hot a temperature as it could go, she spun on her heels and saw him standing in the doorway once again watching her.

"Do you want me to stay?" she asked, staring at him expectantly.

Daring to take a step closer to her, he nodded slowly, smiling faintly at hearing her offer, but quite sure that it even if it came with conditions—since Bren had _always _been about making the deal—he didn't really care in that moment since he'd finally managed to keep her from walking out the door, no matter what the fine print said. "Yes," he said. "I do. Please, Bren. I don't want you to go. We've been planning this for so long, and I know you may not think it's true, but I've been looking forward to seeing you for weeks...I-I...please, don't leave. Please...just stay. I want you to stay, okay?"

Brennan stared at him for a long time, and then slowly nodded her head. "I won't go," she said.

"Great," he said, his shoulders suddenly relaxing as some of the tension went out of his body. "That's great. Awesome, even."

"But," she continued, causing Angel to tense a bit more as she set up the conditions that he knew would always accompany any deal she struck...even with him. "There are two things that have to happen if you want me to say," she replied.

"Yup. It's always a bargain," he muttered under his breath, quiet enough that his utterance was inaudible to her. _But it's not like it hasn't always been that way with her. In any case, fine, whatever, _he thought. "I don't want you to go, Bren. Stay with me. Please. I'll do I need to do to get you to stay, okay. So just tell me what you want me to do."

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-TBC-

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**_A/N2:_**_Okay, there's part one of three. Part two will be posting in approximately eight hours. Until then, feel free to occupy yourselves with images of Angel naked and dripping wet in his bathroom, as that's what up next. Stay tuned!~_


	2. Part II: A Bargain in the Bathroom

**The After Party**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **_Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from Bones or Angel... or anything else. Yes, we're wrecking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? _::blinks:: _Good. Then, moving on―_

**Summary: **_After Angel's romp with Eve at the Wolfram and Hart Halloween Party, a surprise visitor from Washington D.C. ends up in his penthouse and asks where he's been. Set at the end of Angel episode 5x05 - "The Life of the Party." Bones/Angel crossover. Very, very AU. Sequel to "Toe to Toe," "Barging In," "Making Him Beg" and "Comfort on the Edge of Reason." Complete. _

**Logistical Notes: **_For those who are wondering, in Bones chronology, this story would take place two years before season 1...or one year before Brennan worked the Gemma Arrington case with Booth._

**A/N:** _So, we continue our posting After Party day with part II. Thanks to all who dropped us a line so far. It means more to us than we can say. It seems as if the most common question/comment has been: will we learn more about...INSERT SOMETHING. The answer is...well, it doesn't matter what the something is. The answer is yes. Now, the question of when you might learn something about it is up for debate. Much like that trickster Joss Whedon, you might not always get a chronological bit of information in a chapter. But, eventually, we promise, all will make sense. If it does help, however, all canonical happenings in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel through seasons 7 and seasons 5 respectively are taken as having happened in this storyline's world. If you want to see how and why Brennan's existence changed things, then read on._

**UNF Alert: **_This piece has some very serious unfness. Go figure. Nothing too edgy or deviant, but nonetheless, if you're not into reading about the steamy side of life, or really shouldn't be, we ask that you take a pass and find another story, because this will have some pretty steamy stuff of the seriously unf variety. However, if you're like most of our readers and dig that kind of thing, tee up that triple-grande latte and get ready for a real zinger. Enjoy! Note...yes, in case you're wondering, most of the wording of this alert is the same as it was in Part I. We sort of wanted to see who would notice and who wouldn't, and also because we amuse ourselves in such same ways, we left it the same. Did anyone notice? ::blinks:: Yes, well...anyway, it applies more to Part II even more than it did to Part I, so prepare yourselves..._

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**Part II: A Bargain in the Bathroom**

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Piercing blue eyes stared intently at pleading brown ones as Brennan tried to judge if he was sincere or not. After a moment, apparently satisfied with what she'd seen, she nodded and began to explain the terms of her offer.

"The first condition that I have for staying requires that you take a shower," she told him. "A long and hot and very intense shower during which you are going to thoroughly bathe yourself."

"Huh," he grunted. "A 'very intense' shower? I'm not sure I know how that's different from a regular shower." He tilted his head as he leveled a curious gaze at her. Just before he was going to suggest a way to make the shower more intense, he was persuaded to hold his tongue by the sudden narrowing of her eyes as she opened her mouth to speak again knowing that now was not a time to push his luck.

"A very intense shower is where you do whatever you have to do to make certain that you completely eradicate any evidence that any other female but me has touched you tonight. Since we don't have a steam or a sauna handy, I don't care if you have to scald every inch of skin on that very aesthetically appealing body of yours, but this shower will have to do because you're going to scrub the rancid smell of that slut off of you," she told him. "I don't care what you have to do to get rid of it, but the next time I lean in next to you and take a deep breath, I better only smell you, Angel."

Grinning at her, he pursed his lips to keep from letting the smile become too large. _Good thing I've been working out, _he noted with amusement. _I don't care what her reasons are, she just asked me—hell, ordered me—to get naked. As bad as things have gone so far, and as close as she came just now to walking out the door, hell, I may still have a chance to get laid if I play my cards right and don't fuck this up. If she didn't want it—if she didn't want me—she'd be halfway back to LAX by now. So don't blow the save, you dumb fuck._

He shrugged out of the burnt orange button down shirt, bunched it in his hands, and tossed it at her feet. He watched her eyes become a little less impervious than they had before as they skimmed over his chest and shoulders, and he grinned as he felt a vague, prickly tingling on his skin. "So," he chuckled, as he pulled at the button on his black pinstripe suit trousers. "Is the second thing that's gonna happen here is you lending me a helping hand to do the scrubbing, lass?"

She narrowed her eyes as he unzipped the trousers and let them fall lose on his hips. Although they'd both lost their respective accents many, many moons before, Brennan knew him well enough to know that he wasn't above using what had become a pet-name between them over the years to manipulate her when they were in bed—or, as now appeared to be the case, on their way to it. She stared at him as the steam from the hot water filled the cubicle of the walk-in shower and wafted into the rest of the bathroom. Shaking her head, she told him, "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"Yeah," he told her with a lascivious glint in his dark eyes. "And, moreover, I think you would, too."

"Then," she said as she stepped aside so that he could enter the confines of the shower from which warm gusts of steam were now bellowing out, "it seems as if we're both going to be disappointed because I'm not laying a finger on you—and you're most _definitely _not touching me—until you get that horrid smell off of you."

Once he recognized her stubbornly determined look for what it was, he sighed in slight exasperation. "Fine," he said as he began to take off his pants and kicked them away, standing naked before her as he realized two things: first, that the black boxer briefs he'd been wearing earlier had apparently disappeared at some point between when he'd been messing around with Eve and hastily dressed as the Archduke Sebassis and his goons barged into his office, and second, that he was already half-hard, which he noted with a slight wince when his gabardine slacks brushed against his erection. As soon as he kicked his trousers to the side, he glanced up to see if Brennan had noticed the same, but her eyes were rigidly fixed on his face and not on anything located further south of there. With a shrug he said casually, "Okay. Not a problem. It's not like I wasn't going to shower anyway."

"Good," Brennan said. "Then you shower, so we can get to the second thing we're going to do if I'm going to stay."

"Do I even want to ask?" he questioned her as he stepped into the shower and felt the hot water pelt the skin of his lower back. He hissed in response as he felt the heat of the water seep into his skin, and for a few seconds forgot Brennan was even there, as he luxuriated in the feel of the hot water of the shower as it caressed his sore muscles. After a minute, Angel's attention was pulled back to the present when he heard the shuffle of Brennan's feet as she leaned against the entry to the walk-in shower, her arms folded as she simply stood there, watching him.

Brennan, for her part, stared at him with more than mild interest as she finally answered his question, "No, probably not."

Angel turned around and let the hard spray hit him square in the chest, and for about a minute, he simply leaned forward, his hands pressed against the cold tile wall as the water pummeled his chest and, after a little while, his scalp. Finally, as he felt the tension in his muscles begin to uncoil, he stepped back and reached for the bar of soap. He rolled the bar between his hands as he raised his eyes and met Brennan's hard stare. Steam billowed out of the walk-in shower and made the air between them hazy, but through the mist Angel could see the heat affecting her. Tiny beads of perspiration dotted her forehead along her hairline where tiny wisps of her darkened auburn hair had started to slightly curl and on her chest in the cleft between her breasts. Despite the temperature of the water that was pelting down on his skin, he felt a shiver run up his spine at the prospect of being able to lick those delicious beads of sweat from the places they'd gathered. A crooked grin spread across his lips as he admired the way the skin of her chest and shoulders flushed a soft pink, a shade lighter than the way her skin blushed when she arched her back at the moment she crested in release, although not quite as flushed as he knew she could become once she'd come. For a moment, he considered reaching out and pulling her into the shower with him so he could bring her to that point, then he thought better of it.

_Patience, _he reminded himself. _Don't fuck this up. Don't blow the save. Wait her out. Don't blink again. Just...be...patient._

"You like watching me, don't you?" he asked with a smirk as he felt the soap work into a lather. "It's okay. You can admit it, you know." Angel shook his head as he turned the soap between his hands, wondering how he could have gone two or three rounds in his office with Eve and yet still feel so unsatiated. As he felt Brennan's gaze weigh on him, he felt a fluttering sensation at the base of his spine. He blinked away the thought and looked up at her with a crooked grin.

"You like being watched?" she retorted, trying to keep her voice even but giving herself away by the way she shifted her hips against the wall.

"By you?" he asked with an arched eyebrow, hearing the tension at the edge of her voice as he watched her squirm. _What's that I hear? _he smirked. _A wee bit of interest there, lass? Are you flirting with me, or just playing games? _He waggled his eyebrows and laughed. "Always."

"And, yet, here I am still doubting that for some reason," Brennan responded. "I wonder why," she added with narrowed eyes as she looked at him.

Angel blinked and licked his lips, but said nothing as he rubbed the soapy lather under his arms and over his hard, flat belly, then stood under the spray to rinse before lathering his hands up again. He felt the deep tugging sensation behind his navel and knew he was getting even harder at the thought of her watching him, and, while he knew it would amount to a bit of self-torture, he reached a foamy, soapy hand down and washed his cock, balls, and dark curls to ensure that no trace of Eve's smell would cling to him. As he fisted himself, he glanced up again at Brennan and held her gaze, fairly certain that it was not just the steamy warmth of the bathroom that was causing her face, neck and chest to pinken. He leaned against the shower wall with one arm and arched his head forward into the spray as he closed his fingers around his hardening length and tugged. He held himself tight, dragging the skin back and forth, letting the loose skin slip over his rim before pulling back again. Angel sucked in a sharp breath between his teeth as he found himself as aroused by the knowledge that she was watching him as he was by the way he was pumping himself. After a few seconds, he raised his head and turned to look at her as he continued to work his hand on his flesh below. He shot her a cocky, open-mouthed grin as he dared her to let her eyes swivel lower.

_Come on, Bren, _he urged her silently. _You want this. I can see it in the way your eye muscles are twitching that you're doing everything you can not to look at it. I can tell by the way your skin's flushing. I can hear it in the shift in your breathing. I can smell it. You want it. You want me_. He smirked, then looked away again, picking up the speed of his strokes as he glanced down and watched his skin slide back and forth over his glistening tip as a soft groan escaped from his lips. _Come and take it, lass._

Brennan opened her mouth to speak and her voice came out a bit more throaty than she would've liked as she said, "I'd be very careful there."

"Why?" he grunted, breathless as he slowed his motions and lifted his eyes to meet hers. "While I know you... definitely can be the jealous type, I..._oh, fuck_...never thought you'd be...jealous of seeing me get myself off." He squinted his eyes as he struggled to maintain his focus amid the swirl of pleasurable sensations, his balls hitching as he felt himself begin the slow spiral towards release, but he never tore his eyes from hers.

"Ohhhh," he moaned. "Mmmmmm...ohhhh, _fuck_..." He turned around, facing her and bracing himself against the back wall of his shower as he continued to stroke himself. "Ohhh...ohhh, shit, Bren..." He leaned his head back and squeezed his eyes shut for a few moments, growling as he tried to hold himself together. Lowering his head once more, he opened his eyes and looked for a sign, any sign at all, that she might be growing restless at the sight and sound of him working himself over. "Mmmmm...ohhhh...mmmm..._guh_...ohhhh, fuck, _Bren-nnnn._" He clenched his teeth, his molars aching a little as he struggled to hold back the waterfall of his own release. "Oh, _fuck!" _

He grunted again, slowing his strokes and loosening his grip slightly, then said, "Because, Bren, after all these years, you know as well as anyone that I...I-I...can be ready to go again pretty damn quickly." He then narrowed his gaze at hers as he asked, curiosity clear in his voice, "Or, is there something else that I'm missing and there's another...reason it would particularly bother you... to see me come?" He swallowed hard, and he felt the wave of his imminent release recede as the dull, round ache in his balls became more pronounced. He tightened his grip once more, but maintained the slow, loping pace of his tugging strokes. "I know you want...you want to touch me," he said hoarsely, his words coming in gasps as he struggled to hold back his release. "I know you...you want to touch me...and that you know just how you want to touch me." He dragged his skin over his tip again and held it there for a moment before letting it slide back again, thinking in that moment how much he wanted that maddening sensation to be because he was enveloped by the wet warmth of her body and not the fingers of his own hand.

"I wanna feel you," he rasped. "I wanna feel you...your body...the way it feels when you take me and your wet walls pull me deeper and deeper inside you. You know that...and you know you want that, too. I know you do." He grunted again as his balls tightened. "You know...you can't...you can't hide that from me, Bren." He arched his head back and hissed at the pulsing ache he felt. "Not after all this time. Can't hide from me. Never could, never will." Angel lowered his gaze again and saw the flash in her eyes. "_Fuuucckkk_," he groaned. He arched an expectant eyebrow and watched her lip quiver at his question. He kept talking, the effort of forming words, even if only in four- or five-word gasps, seemingly distracting him enough that it held him there on the edge of a shattering release. "But," he grunted, "if you want me to stop...I will...just...say the word, Bren."

He slowed his strokes down even more, which made the ache in his balls even more agonizing. "We...we could start to...to make up for some lost time...you and me...you know?" He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, watching her lips open, then close, and her tongue peek out, lick those lips, then disappear again. "Because I'd much rather...have you jerking me off or touching me...however you want to...whatever way want to touch me...than stand here...rubbing one out in front of you...and, if you do, I-I...I think we both know that I'll make it worth your while afterwards." He gave her another lopsided grin, then chuckled and held his tongue between his lips for a moment as he sought once more to focus his mind. He licked his lips then added, "I promise."

She stared at him for almost a minute, mentally cursing herself for the fact that he was right, and moreover, he knew her well enough to know that he was right. For a moment—an agonizingly long moment of torture—she _almost _gave in. After all, his points were not only logical and accurate, but she really, _really _wanted to not only touch him, but be touched by him. However, eventually, her wounded pride kept her from giving in when a stray thought jumped into her head that just a few hours earlier he'd most likely been making the same sounds and looking and feeling the same exact way as he did in that moment because of what Eve had been doing to him.

_Fuck it,_ a vindictive voice grunted in her head as she gritted her teeth in an aggravated frustration. _Why should he get off so easily_—_both literally and figuratively? He's not winning this one. Not at all. I can't. I just can't._

Her mind made up, and her resolve hardened, she slowly shook her head. "I may not have the same sense of smell that you do, but I think we both know my ability to catch your scent—both what should be there and what shouldn't—is pretty damn good," she said, ignoring his attempt to coax her into a better mood. "So, unless you're absolutely certain that that foul scent is completely gone from wherever you picked it up fucking whatever you did, it would probably be a very good thing for both of us if I don't lend you a hand." She stopped and then pursed her lips for a moment before she added, "Just so that we're clear, I'm saying that if I were you, I wouldn't leave that shower until you're absolutely certain that I won't smell her on you again. I'll be sick if I catch even so much of a faint whiff. And, if I do, I'm gone, Angel. I mean it."

Angel stood under the hot spray and stroked himself a couple of more times before reaching once more for the soap. "I think you just want to extend the viewing experience," he said, arching a skeptical eyebrow as he surveyed her face for a tell that would confirm that she was bluffing. "You know I'm clean, lass. And we both know that only a lunatic would walk out the door—of which, you are most definitely not." He paused and then he shook his head as he continued, "Naawww. We both know if you'd wanted to leave, you would've done it twenty minutes ago. So, I'm calling your bluff, Bren. I think the only reason you're playing hard to get now is because your pride's still wounded...and just because you like seeing me naked and hard." He stopped again, almost as if he were stopping to consider what he'd just said, and after a few seconds, he nodded. "Yeah. That's it. Hell, I think that's probably the better half of why you liked tying me up so many times when we were together in London."

"Now, look," she snapped, her annoyance flaring at what was an age-old argument that they'd often had throughout the years. "I haven't done that in a _very _long time, but when I did—"

"But when you did," he interrupted her. "You were particularly vicious on those nights. Remember? I know you do because it was like that..._you_ were like the last time we were together before I got my soul back."

"No," she told him. "You're wrong, because you've never really seen me vicious, Angel...not now...and most certainly not on that night. That wasn't me being vicious," she snorted, as she shook her head slightly at the memory he'd conjured for them both. "_That_ was just me punishing Angelus for being rude, insolent, and insulting. Which punishment you seem to be rather interested repeating in given the way you're acting now. So are you trying to tell me something, Angel?"

"No," he chuckled. "I'm just trying to remind you that in the end, you only punished yourself that night, remember?"

_Speaking of self-punishment, _he frowned. _This isn't working, except to make my balls hurt worse. Time to take a different tack._

Angel drew a couple of more long, firm strokes with his soapy hand before letting his hand fall away. He turned around and let the hard spray again massage the lingering tightness out of his upper back and shoulders, which still ached from being thrown twenty feet in the air and slamming against the wall of the Wolfram & Hart atrium by Lorne's beefy subconscious doppelganger. But as he glanced out of the corner of his eye, he saw Brennan still watching him, just as she had when he'd been pleasuring himself, which reminded him of a deeper ache in another place, the cure for which lay not in the palm of his hand, but rather stood in the doorway of the walk-in shower.

"I remember all of that quite differently, Angel," she said, her voice edged with laughter. "As you don't seem to recall, I took care to take the edge off my own arousal while you were still unconscious and I could look at your very stimulating physique while I used my fingers to get myself off. That was..._quite _satisfying."

"Right," he said, stepping deeper into the shower to let the spray batter his lower back. "I just bet it was, even though we both know you love it the best when I'm the one who makes you come, because I do it better than anyone else, including yourself."

He looked over his shoulder and let his eyes skim her slender, curvy form with an approving glint in his eye. _I wanna touch her, _he thought. _And I already would be touching her if she weren't being so damn stubborn. Like that's anything new, _he thought. _Still, I wanna touch her. Maybe I should. _He stopped, let his eyes run back up towards her chest, and when they focused on the soft pink skin of of her flushed cleavage, he made his decision. _Fuck, maybe? On second thought, yeah, I definitely should_. _Definitely._

"Yeah," Angel said. "But even better, you like it when you come from a rough fuck. You always have, and you always will, don't you?" He didn't pause for even a second to give Brennan a chance to respond as he answered his own question. "I know you do. I remember all the times you asked me to go harder, deeper, faster. So you bet your sweet ass that we both know it's true that you really want me to fill up that fucking bowl of yours as long as you can find out a way not to ask for some more because that would hurt your pride too much for one night when it's already been pretty fucking roughly shellacked. You liked it when I give it to you like that. I know it. You've always liked it rough, when I come at you wild like that, fucking you rough and biting, totally out of control, taking you for everything you have, and when I do, it makes you lose control, too." He stopped for a moment and then asked in a quiet voice, "You think I gave it to her like that, don't you?"

He paused for a beat, carefully looking to see what her response would be. When she didn't say anything, he sighed. "Maybe you're right..." Angel saw her eyes darken, but not with want—he saw her lips twitch, her nostrils flare and her cheeks flush, then her eyes swiveled away—and he knew she was still feeling hurt because of what had happened. "Maybe you're right," he began again, watching her face contort with emotion. "When you said that you've never been afraid of facing either my darkness or yours, but that's not something I can just do with anyone at the drop of a hat, Bren. I can't...I don't trust that easily. So you gotta know, Bren, ...I never fed on her. I couldn't. I may not have been in control, in the sense that I didn't want to do it, but...I never lost control the way I do with you. I never showed her that part of me—the darkness, the demon, the unbridled part of me. I never shared that with her, and she never gave herself to me the way you've given yourself to me. What happened tonight...with Eve...it was nothing. Nothing compared to what we've had. With what we have. It was nothing. It was empty. I didn't want it. I took, but I never gave her anything. I never gave her anything. Not the way I've shared myself with you. You know that, right?"

She leveled her stare at him, blinking several times, before she finally spoke. "I want to believe that, Angel. I very much want to believe that, but—"

Angel kneaded his lips between his teeth and thought for a moment, then said, "Bren, come on. You know I don't want to fuck just anyone. You know who I want to fuck right now. Who I've always wanted to fuck."

"Do I really, Angel?" she asked. "Do I?"

Angel tilted his head to the side and smiled. "Yes, Bren," he said with a flash of his eyebrows. "_You. _It's always been you. I've always wanted you. And I want you in every way. Rough...or easy. Hard and fast, or slow and gentle. All of it. All the time. I always want you. And only you. You know what else? You want that, too, Bren. You know it. I know you do. You want me. Just me and only me. That's what you want, and that's what I want. Just you, just me, just us. You know it. I know it. You know I know it. Hmmmm?"

She was quiet for a moment and then sighed. "Knowing it doesn't make it doable, Angel. Not...not yet anyway."

This time, Angel swallowed a small growl of frustration as he shook his head. "You are so damn stubborn sometimes, it's not even funny, Bren." He paused, and then sighed, "Fine. I said whatever it takes, and I meant it, Bren. So I'm not above humoring you, if that's what I've got to do."

She resisted the temptation to roll her eyes at him and simply said, "Humoring me?"

"By letting you see how low I've sunk, Bren," he clarified. "You want to know how crazy you make me? What you've reduced me to? I'm damn near out of my mind, woman, and if I can't make you see that I want you...well, I'm damn near dying here...I may be CEO of a multidimensional law firm, blah, blah, but right now, I'm a man who wants a woman who doesn't want him, and I'm going out of my damn mind. But worse, I've got a case of the blue balls that's bordering on the lethal. I gotta do something here, Bren. So, you wanna see what you do to me? See how out of my fucking mind you make me? Fine, you will. Watch." He reached his hand down and closed his fingers around himself again, then said with a sloppy grin, "I can't remember the last time we did this kind of thing." He looked up at the ceiling of the shower as he scrolled through a mental Rolodex of the numerous times and ways they'd been together since they first met in 1860. "Actually, I don't think we've ever done this sort of thing, exactly."

"That's right," Brennan said. "Because I'm not really a passive kind of woman."

"No," he barked, unable to help himself as laughed at her statement. "You're most certainly not. Otherwise, you might've just once offered to let _me _tie _you _up in bed, hmmm, lass? That would've been something then, huh? But you never did. Not once in all those times." He stopped and then shook his head wistfully, "More's the pity because I can guaran-damn-tee you that you would've had a hell of a night if you'd ever trusted me enough to do that."

"You know I don't trust easily," she said, frowning slightly. "I never have, and I very seriously doubt that I ever will."

"I know that," he said, his voice suddenly lower and more solemn in the wake of her admission. "I do. Believe me, I do. But it's not like you've got to make a choice to trust me, Bren. Right? Because you know you already do. You've trusted me for years...ever since that night when we decided to trust one another in Chicago, when you gave a third of your soul into my keeping." He paused and swallowed. "I've never betrayed that trust, Bren. You know that. You've known that since that first night in Chicago. You trusted me then. Trust me now."

Brennan stared at him for a few moments, unable to help the surprise she felt at his abrupt shift from teasing and sarcasm to an intimately personal admission of sincere honesty. She felt her throat go dry as her heart rate once again sped up as she considered the significance of his words.

"Angel," she said. "I...I-I do trust you." He tilted his head as if to ask her the same question again, this time without words. Her already crumbling stubbornness was once again faltering. Still, she pressed on even as she repeated, "I _do _trust you, but..." Her voice trailed off as she looked away, her eyes focusing on the grout between the gray slate tiles on Angel's bathroom floor. For several long moments, she let her eyes trace along the grid line as she pondered his words, the room silent but for the strangely hollow sound of water streaming from the shower head splattering against his chest and dripping onto the slate floor and, louder even, the sound of her own heartbeat pulsing in her ears. "I do trust you, I do," she repeated. "I just...I guess you want me to admit that this isn't really about me tying you up or you not tying me up, don't you?" She looked up at Angel, her eyes narrowed as she gave him a long, appraising look, then breathed a soft sigh. "Because it isn't, is it?"

"No," he said, his dark eyes softening as he gave her a warm, open-mouthed smile as he realized she was finally starting to understand and not let the hurt she felt get in the way of that understanding—i.e., that she could be hurt and feel angry, but at some point, she had to let it go if she was going to forgive him. "It's not, Bren."

"I want," she began softly, looking away from him, her voice lowering as she struggled to verbalize her thoughts. "I want to do it, Angel. I'm just not certain if I can...or, if I can, how I would even start to do that."

Angel placed his hands on his hips, tilted his head and looked at her sympathetically as the shower stream continued to pelt his skin. "I'm not asking you to forget it happened, Bren," he said. "Just that you consider setting it aside. Set it aside, and don't let it eat away at us any more. Don't let it steal any more of this time we have together, you know? That's what I mean by letting it go."

Shaking her head at him, she sighed, "If it were really just as simple as putting it aside, I could ignore it, Angel...at least for a while. But, if I do that, I know...believe me, I know that it'll just keep gnawing at me. At some point, I'm going to remember that I set it aside, and it'll come back ten times worse than it was before. And, I don't want to do that. It's making me act like this insecure, wallowing, unstable bitch that I don't even recognize. I-I..." Her voice trailed off as she lost the ability to convey how she was thinking and feeling anymore than she'd already done to that point in time. Letting out a slow breath, she looked away from him again.

He nodded, staring for a moment at the water streaming around his feet and into the drain. Angel shrugged away the thought and raised his gaze to meet hers again. "Bren," he said quietly. "You know, over the years, I've found myself always looking for peace. I mean, of course, you know that. But when I'd go looking for it, sometimes...well, no, a lot of the times actually, I'd usually end up being drawn to places where it was calm and still and there were no demands that anyone would place on me but those I placed on myself."

"Which is why you've gotten so very good at brooding over the years, I suppose?" Brennan asked as she tilted her head at him. "Too much time spent alone, hmmm?"

Angel didn't bother to rise to her small, if familiar, taunt about his tendency to spend too much time reflecting on certain people, issues, and thoughts. Instead, he continued, "It's not that I have a monk-thing or anything, it's just that there aren't a lot of places a guy like me can go for that kinda thing without getting a lot of attention, okay? Most monasteries kinda do the no judgement/no questions asked thing very well, and that's why I like going there, okay?" He suddenly remembered a conversation he'd had with her a century earlier about him taking holy orders and becoming a monk. "The Buddhist monasteries are different than the ones you and I used to talk about." He paused when Brennan arched an eyebrow at him. "They're different than the Christian ones, I mean. They both have established devotionals at fixed times in accordance with a set liturgy, but the Buddhist ones are more...unstructured, I guess. With a more inward-looking focus, if that makes any sense. In Tibet, when I was on my way...after I left China, then some years later, after the Second World War, in French Indochina, and then again, in Sri Lanka. And in each place, I went there because I was in a bad mindset, unable to let go of the past...the things that I'd done, and that had been done to me, and..."

He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again.

"The monks, they taught me how to let go, not by ignoring and pushing away the feelings, but by acknowledging them, seeing them with a kind of objectivity, and with, well, a sort of mindful awareness, just...kind of setting them aside and wilfully deciding to keep moving forward." He paused, shrugged and looked deep into her eyes. "It probably sounds trite to you, but it helped me. I have so many memories rattling around in my head, Bren, of all the horrible things I've done, before, and the stupid ways I've hurt myself and those around me, after I got my soul back that...well, I had to find a way through all that. So I wouldn't lose my mind. And that sort of mindfulness and acceptance, it's helped me."

Brennan frowned. "So you want me to just set it aside, and act as if it didn't happen?"

"No," he said, stepping back into the spray and letting it batter his lower back. "Not that it didn't happen, but accept that it did. And keep moving forward."

"Angel," she sighed. "You can call it whatever you want, but that's the same thing as letting it go...and, I just don't know if I can do that."

"Why?" he asked her. "It's not like you haven't done it before, Bren. You do it all the time. It's just that you call it _compartmentalizing_."

She stopped, taken slightly aback by his observation, and then said, "No, that's not the same thing. That's different."

"Is it?" he asked her. "Is it, really?"

Brennan was quiet for a minute and then said, "The one thing we've never done is asked more of the other than what the other could give. And right now...in this moment...I think for the very first time in our entire relationship, you may be asking that of me, Angel." She stopped and then said, "Look, if you want forgiveness...I-I, I'll try, okay? It's not going to be easy for me...and it's _definitely _going to take some time, but for you...I'll try. Just...don't push me too hard. Okay?"

He stared at her and then slowly nodded, "Okay."

They held each other's gaze for another minute and then this time, it was Brennan who realized that the beads of perspiration that had been accumulating on her forehead had started to multiply tenfold. Realizing how long they'd been in the bathroom, and knowing that if she'd been the one under the water, her skin would've already started to prune more than ten times over, she couldn't help but feel as if they'd spent enough time in a place that was making her feel sweaty and sticky...and not in a good way.

Tilting her head, she paused again, finally taking a step towards him—a step so small it was almost infinitesimal, but it was the beginning of the closing of the distance between them nonetheless. "You know, Angel, while it's been amusing watching you play in the bath, you should know, just for the record, that I'd much rather be personally involved in working you over myself than watching you work yourself over. It's more fun that way...and more rewarding for both of us in the end."

Angel arched an eyebrow and licked his lips, cocking his head to the side as he placed his hands on his hips and waited for her to step forward and into the shower. _Holy shit_, he thought. _Did I just get a called third strike for a third out in the bottom of the ninth? Game over for you, Bren? Because I think it is. I think you're gonna pounce on me, and __thank __God__. I'm so fucking ready. Fuck, yes! _ "Is that your way of saying you'd like to help me get clean after all?"

Brennan laughed out loud, quickly dismissing his suggestion as she noticed how excited he'd suddenly become as she saw his hard cock jerk slightly in front of her. Her mind shifted away from the heavier emotional things they'd just been confronted with, and she found herself thinking about things of a more prurient nature. Amused as ever when she considered how easily the mind of the male species—no matter if said mind was human, demon, or vampire—could shift to sex in less than a nanosecond, she enjoyed herself immensely when she saw the look of hope on his face fall just a tad when she shook her head. "No," she said. "No, I don't think that will be happening. Not now. Not yet. Because, I'm still not laying a hand on you until I see you wash yourself again to ensure that every possible bit of demon taint is washed off of your body. And, it won't be happening a single goddamn second earlier."

He quirked an eyebrow at her response. After another moment, he licked his lips again before he tilted his head to respond. "Okay," he said, shaking his head with a smirk that broke into a crooked grin. "Now you're just being stubborn for stubborn's sake, Bren. I'm clean as a damn whistle and you don't need a vampire's snout to know it. You just watched me work my dick over with a half a bar of soap. The only thing my dick smells like now is Irish Spring, and you know it. So, come on..." He turned around and ducked back under the shower spray. "Hmmmm," he murmured. "Maybe you'd let me do some of the laying of hands on you instead." He held the inside of his lower lip between his teeth, and rinsed the soap out of his pubic hair as he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and saw something flicker in her blue eyes. "Come on," he said, turning to face her again. "You can't fool me. I know you like what you see 'cause I can smell you. You're still horned up as hell, Bren—even if you don't want to admit it." He looked her over, letting his eyes linger at her chest for several seconds before skimming down to the bottom hem of her dress as his languid gaze took in every inch of her long legs. His nostrils flared and he snickered. "By the smell of it, lass, you're ready to go a round or two with me...and then some."

"I think you've confused the lingering stank of that thing you were with earlier with how I smell, Angel," she told him with a smirk, being very careful to neither confirm nor deny his statement. "Because, as I said, you know I'm not the passive type. If I was ready to fuck you, or be fucked by you, trust me—you'd know it. There wouldn't be a single doubt in your mind."

"You think so?" he snorted. Brennan slowly nodded at him. "So you think I'm confused then, huh? You think that I can't tell your scent from anyone else's, Bren—be it man or woman—when I've been filling my nose with the waft of your sex for a century and a half?" He chuckled a bit and then added, "You're wrong. I'd know the smell of your want anywhere. _Anywhere._" He remembered when he would make his way through the alleys behind the row of terraced houses in her section of Cheapside and how he could smell the scent of her arousal and anticipation a half mile away."Besides, Eve's smell...frankly, it wasn't you. Not even close. It was...well, it was less than appealing. It didn't do it for me at all." His nose crinkled at the thought. "But you, Bren..." He grunted and reached again for his shaft, which had begun to twitch with anticipation as he started talking about her scent. "Just thinkin' of the way you smell gets me so fucking hard. It's like apple pie—sweet like brown sugar and vanilla, but a little spicy, with a touch of nutmeg, cinnamon and cardamom. And the more turned on you get, the spicier the smell, and when you just can't take it anymore and you're about to give in and let me touch you, that's when the musky part really comes out. And the more that musky, spicy, sweet smell fills up my nostrils, the hornier I know you are.."

"Well," Brennan said, shifting her weight from one hip to the other as she crossed her arms in front of her chest, and she could feel how wet she was, as much as she tried to ignore it. "You can forget about touching me, because you may not be able to smell that skank on you, but I sure as hell still can."

Angel released himself from his grasp with an exaggerated sigh and reached for the bar of soap on the ledge. "No, you can't," he said as he stared at her. "You're just being a pain in the ass to make me pay for what happened earlier and because you can. But fine," he growled as he soaped himself up again with a low laugh. "If you want me to keep fingering this bar of soap instead of you, fine. I'll do it. But just so you know, you're missing out."

"Hmmmphh," she said as she made a face.

She stared at him as he replaced the bar of soap, took his bottle of shampoo and squeezed a healthy dollop into his hand. As he began to lather his hair, she was quiet for a minute as she watched the muscles of his well-developed shoulders and arms twitch and move as he massaged the shampoo into his scalp. He had definitely bulked up, from the standpoint of his musculature, since she'd seen him six months earlier―the last time having been when he'd surprised her at her new apartment in D.C. right after he'd accepted the job at Wolfram and Hart's L.A. office. Narrowing her stare, she estimated he'd put on fifteen or twenty pounds of muscle, most of it in his upper body, which made her laugh privately at the typical male focus on the upper body muscle groups to the detriment of those of the lower body. That said, while he was, for lack of a better descriptor, beefier than she remembered him last, there was no doubt that her body was responding to the way he looked as she noted a pulse of wetness between her legs as she stood there, still as marble, watching him.

_Fuck_, she thought. _I want him. And, even worse, he knows I want him. But, fuck...he...he hurt me. I know he wants me to let go and set it aside and all that...but he can't just do that and think that everything would be fine between us. I can't...I-I...I had to give him up yet again to another fucking woman I didn't even know about a few hours ago. _She paused for a few seconds, and unconsciously began to chew on her lip as another thought occurred to her. _I bet she's blonde, too. Another leggy blonde. Fuck...I-I...I want to touch him, I want to be with him, but I can't...I need to know what she looked like. Maybe...maybe if she isn't like all the others, maybe I don't need to worry. Maybe...okay. Fuck. Whatever she looks like, I'll deal with it. I just need to ask, so here goes._

Finally, after another minute or two, she tore her gaze away from his body and looked up into his eyes as she asked quietly, "So, what did she look like?"

Angel leaned his head back and sighed loudly. "Why does it matter?" he asked. "I already told you this whole thing was a matter of magic, okay? I didn't..." He turned around and, with his back to the spray, leaned back and rinsed the shampoo out of his hair. "I didn't seek her out the way you think. It was more like an entrancement." When he felt certain there was no more shampoo in his hair, he let a cascade of water fall over him one last time. Then, satisfied, he reached back and turned off the water. He was about to reassure Brennan that he was finally clean, even to her exacting standards, when she cut him off with another question.

"What?" she asked, the angry edge having faded somewhat from her voice as she considered his words carefully as she looked at him appraisingly. "What are we talking about? A spell of compulsion?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "To be honest, I'm not sure. One minute, we were bickering about the Archduke Sebassis, and she was complimenting me on how I'd handled his royal pain-in-the-ass, but she did it in kind of a backhanded way. Then I said something about her dress, which was definitely _not _a compliment, and that was when Lorne came by and started talking about the sexual tension between the two of us and how we needed to get a room." He stopped, recalling that was the moment his head head started to feel like it was wrapped in cotton. Swallowing once, he then added, "Things just sorta went from there." He stepped out of the shower cubicle and reached for a towel. "But it wasn't like I wanted to...I didn't. Eve...I'm not attracted to her, okay? I never was, never will be. She's not my type at all."

"But, Lorne's an empath demon," Brennan said tentatively, almost afraid she was going to make her own case against why she should doubt what Angel had told her earlier. "If he said he was picking up on sexual tension between you two, it had to be something, Angel. He had to have sensed some set of feelings in at least one of you."

"I don't know what he was picking up on, but whatever it was, it wasn't any unresolved sexual tension between me and Eve on _my _part," Angel replied. He paused and then gave her a slight grin as he said, "Unless Lorne was picking up on what I was feeling because of how I felt when I knew I was going to see you tonight? Maybe that was it." Brennan, as he'd anticipated, softened a bit more at his comment. Feeling quite pleased with himself, he continued, "The best way I can explain it is that...well, it was like being possessed. I wasn't really in control, Bren, okay?"

Brennan quickly moved to stand between Angel and the bar where his clean towels were, chewing her lip again for a moment before she said quietly, as more a statement than a question, "You enjoyed it."

Angel quirked an eyebrow as he noted her nibbling on her lip, which he'd long ago realized was a sign of anxiety and insecurity. "Come on, Bren," he said, his voice low and solicitous. "It _was _sex."

"And, you enjoyed it," Brennan repeated, her voice still a bit soft as she repeated her statement. "Didn't you?"

Angel felt torn in how to respond. On one hand, he desperately wanted to find some way to ease the gapping sense of uncertainty that seemed to have swallowed Brennan's self confidence—at least, in regards to their relationship, however they chose to define it—whole. On the other hand, he also didn't want to say anything that would make the situation any worse than it already was by inflaming Brennan's anger about what had happened between he and Eve. After a moment of heavy silence, Angel tried to walk the line between both extremes.

"I'm not gonna lie," he told her. "I mean, it wasn't exactly unpleasant. But look...as soon as I came to my senses, I felt like I'd been hit by a ton of bricks, and all I could think of was what a huge mistake it all was...but—" He stopped again and then lifted his gaze to meet hers. He only continued when she was looking him straight in the eyes. "It _was _just sex, Bren. It wasn't anything important or significant or fulfilling in anyway. You know that, right? What happened with Eve, I mean, you've gotta believe me when I say that it wasn't really even a mistake, because there wasn't really anything...how would you say it, Bren? There was...nothing volitional on my part. It was just two people fucking, Bren, in as base and simple a way as there ever was. There was no emotional or...or any connection with her at all on any level." His voice softened as he pleaded with her, "That's why...you know that's why it's different from what you and I have, right? It was less..so much less, and it couldn't ever be anything more than that."

She stared at him for another minute and then bowed her head as a slight lingering skepticism still colored her response. "I want to believe that, Angel. I really do. But I hope you can understand why I find that somewhat hard to believe. I mean, I do know how you feel about magic, but a part of me wonders, did you even try to fight it? Or was it no big deal?"

"Bren," Angel sighed. "Of course I tried to fight it. I mean, I did. At least, I know I thought about doing it. But you gotta understand. Things happened so damn fast that I—" his voice trailed off as she continued to stare at him with a piercing gaze that made his defense crumple before the onslaught of her skepticism. Deciding to take another tack, he said, "You should know me well enough to know that nothing pisses me off like magic does. I fucking hate it—"

"So says the head of one of the largest conglomerates and peddlers of magic in the Western Hemisphere," Brennan interjected as she gave him a pointed look.

"Don't get me wrong," he replied. "I have to deal with magic on a daily basis. That doesn't mean I like it or have to get off on using it—unlike some people."

"Oh, please," she said with a roll of her eyes. "You've liked the fact that I'm a witch since the very first time you realized that it was the only thing that kept you from being able to make me your bitch since the very first night we met. And, we both know that the only reason you don't like me using my powers around you is because it makes you nervous since you're never quite certain what I'm going to do. So, go ahead. Admit it, Angel. Come on."

"Make you my bitch?" he laughed. "Look, you think I get off on you being a witch? Hardly. Now, do I dig the fact that you have the proverbial balls to keep me on my toes? I'll admit that. But it's got nothin' to do with your magic. And you know exactly why magic creeps me out. _Exactly. _Do we really need to rehash all that again? 'Cause I sure as fuck don't. I've spent more than a hundred years trying to put all that behind me."

He considered telling her that the encounter with Eve didn't take the edge off of his desire for her, but he was afraid that might be the thing that would set her off like a Roman candle, given the aggressively hostile vibe she was radiating on an ebb and flow cycle that would make even the best of fishermen dizzy. So, wisely, he decided to keep that observation to himself.

But after a second, his own restlessness and arousal—physical and otherwise—got the better of him. "Make you my bitch?" he grunted. "Huh, right. You know that's not my style, Bren. Never has been, never will be. I mean, sure, Angelus would've made you his bitch. And by the way you responded to me talking about him and all that rough fucking he'd have given you, something makes me think you might've gotten off on that idea." He paused and then shook his head as he added, "Never mind the horseshit about what you said just now about you not being the passive type, _blah, blah, blah_." Angel rolled his eyes disdainfully at the ludicrousness of the entire subject. He then paused, snapped his fingers, and then corrected himself, "Oh, sorry. My bad. There is a difference between being passive and submissive, isn't there? Because we all know the part you get off on is the whole domination thing, isn't it, Bren?"

Brennan rolled her jaw as she watched him standing at the entrance to his shower, dripping wet and still noticeably aroused. Her anger hung over her eyes like a red haze, coloring the way she saw him, so what would otherwise begin to titillate her instead infuriated her.

"I'm not even going to dignify that asinine comment with a response," Brennan muttered. She then stopped, her head tilted slightly as she recalled his earlier words, and finally processed their significance. "And by the way, what did you mean, 'It wasn't exactly unpleasant?'" she suddenly asked him, repeating his earlier words.

Angel stared at her for a moment as her nostrils began to flare again, abruptly feeling like he'd stepped on a landmine set on a time delay trigger. _Fuck_, he thought. _This isn't good. __Again__. Not good at all. _

"If it was so damn good," Brennan snapped at him,cutting him off before he could even open his mouth to form a coherent defense, "then, like I said before, I'm sure that you could make a simple call and Eve would only be too happy to come bouncing back up here to let you give her another spin." She gritted her teeth again for a moment, all traces of her earlier vulnerability and softness having disappeared. "God, I am such an idiot sometimes." She shook her head as she quickly lifted her head and muttered, "So, if things...if the sex with Eve wasn't that unpleasant...tell me, Angel—what the fuck? Why do you even want me to stay?"

Angel shook his head and sighed. "It wasn't that damn good," he said. "Look...how do I say this? It wasn't good at all. It was shitty sex. Empty, lame, shit sex. I don't even hardly remember half of it." He paused, hesitating for the briefest of times as he debated whether to tell her what he'd just a couple of minutes before decided would be a dumb idea to tell her. Running out of ideas to appease her anger and insecurities, he finally added, "And just in case you're wondering, it wasn't satisfying in the least. It was so damn underwhelming that it didn't take the edge off at all."

"_What?_" Brennan suddenly hissed, her eyes widening in that moment as she processed the significance of his words, and Angel knew he'd made a mistake and should've trusted his instincts as she turned on him. "So, I'm some sort of fucking relief pitcher, pulled in from the goddamn bullpen to salvage this no-hitter for you since you're still all horned up? Is all that I am now?" She didn't even stop to wait for his answer. Instead, she shook her head and made a movement to turn away from him as she said, "Well, Angel, you can fucking forget it if you think—"

"Now, wait," he said, reaching out and grabbing her wrist to still her retreat. When she didn't chastise him for touching her or pull out of his grasp, he pressed his advantage with her. "That's not what I meant. What I'm saying is...well...you've got nothing to worry about, Bren. Eve's...not—I _don't _want her. I told you— I want _you_. Just you."

Still chewing her lip, her voice was a bit softer as she asked with a small tilt of her head, "If you mean that—if you _really _mean that, then, why won't you tell me what she looks like?"

"Because I know you," he sighed in weary exasperation. "You're gonna hear it and start obsessing about it, alright?"

"First, I don't obsess," Brennan countered, even as she finally pulled her hand from his grasp as he'd expected her to do all along.

"Like fuck you don't," Angel growled. "The whole past hour has been one giant exercise in _How to Fucking Obsess _by Dr. Temperance Brennan. I mean, holy hell, Bren. You've got this down to such a perfect science, I think all you need to do is write it down, you've got yourself a spiffy new publication all ready and raring to go for your CV."

She pursed her lips and said, "That's not funny."

He shook his head as he smirked slightly, "Like fuck it isn't."

"Angel—" she said. "I'm not obsessing—"

"Any more than I brood?" he blinked at her. "Right, Bren. Then if you're not obsessing, why do you keep asking me what she looks like? Why does it matter? I already told you that I got jinxed by some fucking mystical flashover because Lorne didn't get his beauty sleep. I don't understand why you—"

"And, second, you said it wasn't a big deal," she told him in a louder voice, cutting him off as she spoke and shooting him a look that caused him to leave his mini rant about her impossible stubbornness and insecurities left unspoken. "Ergo, if it wasn't a big deal, then you'd tell me." She stopped and then said, "You know what? I think I've been pretty good about things between us during the years, Angel. You had your life, and I had mine, and every so often we've gotten together and seen what might happen. And, that's been great." She paused, equivocating for a minute, before she finally started to verbalize what was at the heart of her insecurities. "But, that doesn't mean that I liked having to hear about what was happening...especially...especially since things changed after you left Chicago."

"Bren," he said, taking another step towards her. "Things _did _change when I left Chicago, and when you went down just a couple of months later to Mexico. But Bren, you know why I left—so that you could go off and do your thing, join those digs down there in Mexico that you'd been talking about since the night you found me in Chicago." He cocked his head to the side and smiled, his warm brown eyes bright and wide as he looked at her. "And when I went off to New York, you went down to Mexico. And just like we'd agreed, I went down to Mexico, six months later. Remember?"

"Yes," Brennan said, her voice tense but wavering. "But, that was—"

"I'm glad I came down to Mexico," he said, interrupting her before she could run the conversation back into the ditch. "I'm glad that you sorta blackmailed me into doing it. It was a good thing...a really good thing. Remember how I rented that two-bedroom _pensión _in Mérida, overlooking the plaza by the Catedral de San Ildefonso? You took me to one of the dig sites and showed me the Mayan ruins you were excavating. You came to Mérida for the weekend, and you were going to be heading back to the dig site on Sunday afternoon, but that Saturday night, we were out at that terrific restaurant—what was it called? You got the _pollo molé_, which you raved about." Angel paused for a moment and laughed. "I just sipped _tequila añejo _while you ate, and you ended up ordering dessert, and then coffee afterwards, and as a result the dinner went on forever, and I got so smashed on that great tequila. And we were walking back to the pensión and caught in the rain, and the storm was a real doozy, a bad one that lasted for a week. The rainy season got an early start that year, I guess. You couldn't go back to the dig site because the roads and all were washed out, and it took another two weeks for them to clean up the roads after the storm, so you stayed with me in Mérida." He grinned. "We spent almost three whole weeks in bed, only leaving the bedroom to cook or to bathe."

Angel saw that Brennan's creased forehead and furrowed brow finally seemed to have smoothed out, and the earlier hardness in her pale eyes seemed to have softened as she looked over his shoulder, distracted by the memory.

As she remembered the interlude in question, she licked her lips before she nodded, "I remember. It was flan, by the way." She saw a flash of mild confusion cross his face and so she clarified, "The dessert? That first weekend, at La Cocina de Mama's, the dessert I ordered was cinammon flan covered in caramel sauce. It was so good, I felt so bad that you couldn't enjoy the taste of it. But, since we'd spent the whole meal flirting and touching under the table in between when the server brought us food, by the time we walked back to the pensión, you were so turned on, you kept saying that you saw smudges of the caramel sauce at the corners of my mouth and on my chest so you had an excuse to kiss me there." She stopped, this time, allowing a true smile to break the facade that colored the seriousness of her face.

"I did say that, didn't I?" he laughed. He smiled, looking up and over her shoulder as he replayed the memory in his mind. "You're right. I _did _want an excuse to kiss you there, to feel your lips against mine, and let my tongue work your lips, your neck, your chest...that wonderful space between your delicious tits...because you know how much I've always loved that spot. It's definitely in my top five favorite spots on your entire body. Not first or second, of course, but a very respectable third or fourth, I think." Angel grinned and swiveled his eyes to her décolletage, licking his lips as he noted how her porcelain skin had flushed a pretty pink, its smooth surface glistening with sweat. "I didn't taste the caramel," he laughed. "But it's not like that mattered anyway," he said, his voice dropping a half-octave as he felt a tittering at the base of his spine at the thought of dragging his tongue along the cleft between her breasts. "You taste sweeter than any dessert I've ever had."

Brennan stared at him for a few seconds, flushing again at his compliment, and then said in a soft voice, "I miss that part about us, Angel. The small things, you know? Back then...I liked it that you got to stay," she said with a wistful sigh. "It made me miss what we had in Chicago before I left even more."

"I know," he told her. "In some ways, we were even more domestic in Mérida than we were in Chicago. Remember? You'd go out to the _mercado _and buy peppers, vegetables, avocados, a couple of live chickens in the morning—then, later that day, we'd bleed 'em for my dinner and use the meat for whatever I was cooking up for you—and once in awhile, we'd even toss in some _chorizo _or salt pork. You'd come back from the _mercado_, and then I'd draw you a bath, and you'd relax in the bath while I cooked up some kind of crazy quasi-Yucatán Angel combo mambo thing for a light dinner. I got to be pretty decent at that central Mexican style of cooking—at least, that's what you told me." He scrunched his nose at the memory. "Yeah, my taste buds aren't any good—when it comes to anything that's not a bodily fluid—but I sure remember how those peppers, onions, fresh tomatoes and the _achiote _spice would fill up the whole apartment with their smells. I can't really figure out how that turned out to be something that you swore was so tasty, but you always ate every bit of it."

Brennan chewed the inside of her lip as if to suppress a smile, and her pale blue eyes glimmered as she listened to Angel's memoir.

"If it had tasted like shit," she told him, "I wouldn't have eaten it just to indulge you...especially for three consecutive weeks. Honestly, it was good. Not the best, mind you, but for what we had to work with at the time, it was delicious."

"Heh," he chuckled. "That's good to know. I don't feel too guilty then when I think about you eating whatever semi-gourmet, but special made-to-order Angel masterpiece I'd whipped up for you." He stopped again as he jerked his chin at her. "Do you remember what would happen next?"

Slowly, Brennan nodded. "Of course."

"I'd drink my chicken's blood, and you'd still be quite relaxed from your lavender-salt bath and the both of us pretty mellow after a couple of glasses of _tequila añejo _or Amontillado, or the _pulque _you picked up once in a while at the _mercado_," he said as they both reveled in the shared memory. "And then we'd go back into the bedroom and make delicious love all night, finally dropping off to sleep sometime before the bells rung at the _catedral _to signal it was time for Matins."

Angel closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the last bit of the memory before he opened them again and smiled at her. "That was a really great time for us, wasn't it?"

She swallowed heavily once and then looked away from him so that she hoped he wouldn't see her eyes water ever so slightly at his question. "It was," she agreed, her voice a breathy whisper. "So much so that it made going back to the way things were before all that much harder."

He was quiet for a moment, and then nodded even if she couldn't see him. "I know, Bren. I know. But you know what that tells me?"

"What?" she responded quietly.

"As great as that time was, it wasn't the only good thing that happened when we've been together. It doesn't matter if it was in your apartment in Chicago, at a dig site in Mexico, or any of the other places we've gone when we've spent time together, but when we've been together, it's been good. Real good." He stopped again, another memory flashing as he said, "You remember the time you came to New York right before VJ day? We went to Niagara Falls for the weekend? Took the train up from the city and spent the entire trip in our cabin?" He paused and then said, "Or how about that trip to Vegas where we ended up crashing Elvis and Priscilla's wedding reception?"

Unable to help herself as he mentioned memory after memory of a time when it had just been the two of them, Brennan smiled faintly. "Like I said, Angel. I haven't forgotten anything about the times I've spent with you over the years. I remember them all."

"Then you know, Bren," he said, taking a step towards her. "You know that, yeah, some things have changed between us. I mean, you better than most people know that time passes and things change. But the important things? Between us? Those are constant. How I feel about you...and how you feel about me? How we make each other feel? Those are still the same. They always have been, and I think they always will be. I mean, I care about you, and you care about me, and we still want each other." He paused and then tilted his head as he asked quietly, "Right?"

She stopped, took a deep breath, answering haltingly, "Yes...but—" She swallowed once and then said, "That's true. How we feel about each other...I trust that won't change...mostly."

"Mostly?" Angel asked, his brow crinkling once more in confusion. "What do you mean?"

Brennan sighed and then said, "I'm sorry, Angel, but, you're making me crazy. It seems like everytime I turn around recently, you've shacked up with some new love of your life, and it hurts, Angel. Most days, I can ignore it. Most days, I can just use logic and reason to quiet the gnawing voice in my head that says something won't happen to make you change how you feel about me. But...every so often, I get hit with a bad day, and that's when the insecurities rear their ugly heads with a vengeance. Because then I keep thinking one day you're going to find someone, and when you finally settle down with her, there won't be any place in your life for me, and I'll lose you completely. At some point, they'll be someone that you care enough for, maybe even love, who won't want to share you. And, then what'll happen to me? Where will I be then?"

"That's not gonna happen, Bren," he said. "Nobody's gonna push you out of my life. It's just not possible, okay?"

He looked into her eyes and saw the struggle in them, torn as she was between anger and hurt, on the one hand, and a yearning to trust him on the other.

"We're woven together, Bren, and we can't be separated, even if we lead separate lives. Anyone...anyone who comes into my life, or your life, and tries to pull us apart...they'll fail. They always will. That I can promise you." Angel looked away for a moment, narrowed his eyes in thought, then turned to her again. "But what I can't promise you that there won't be other women who come and go in my life...just like I know there will be other men who walk through yours. But, Bren, you're...those other women will be foil to your candle. You have so big a head start on a johnny-come-lately, it's not even funny. They'd be fighting against a standard that...well, you've been my standard for a century and a half, since that night at Covent Garden. You know that, right?"

She looked at his, her gaze softening a bit as his words bolstered a bit of hope in her. She opened her mouth, but still wasn't sure what to say when Angel spoke again.

"Bren," he said. "This way we are—this thing we have, and what makes us _us_—it's not just about the years you've been in my life. We are one soul, Bren, you and me. You're a part of me, and I think that makes me a part of you, too. No one who walks into my life, or walks into yours, will ever have that...well, will ever have that kind of link. That's what makes you different from all the others. It's not just the years. You're part of me, and I'm a part of you, and we always will be. That's why this thing with Eve," he repeated. "It was nothing. I swear. I know I've told you that about a thousand times in the last hour, and I'll tell you a thousand more if I have to to get you to believe me. It was _nothing_."

"But, how can you say that?" she asked him, her voice rising as she spoke. "How can you know? Especially...with what Darla's made certain to take great pleasure in telling me in the last ten or fifteen years. Do you know how many times I've had to hear about your latest and greatest true loves? I heard about everyone of them from the bottle-blonde slayer to your trip down sire-memory-lane to Cordelia...and you know what?"

"I don't want to talk about Darla," he growled, glancing down at his feet and the puddle that was growing around him as he dripped water on his floor. "Or Buffy. Or Cordy. Enough, Bren. _Enough_, alright?"

Taking a breath, she shook her head, some of her anger returning as he seemed to be dismissing her points so casually. "No, it's _not _enough," she snapped. "You've spent how much of the past decade falling in love or lust or both with how many of them? Come on, Angel. Don't tell me it's pure coincidence that we've seen each other how often during the past ten years?"

"Now wait a minute," Angel said. "The times we _did_ see each other these last ten years, it was...we fucked like maniacs, Bren. Some of the most mind-rippingly intense and physical fucks we've ever had. We'd fuck and fuck and fuck again, hard and fast, then slow and gentle, then hard and fast again, until neither of us even knew our own names."

"You're right," Brennan nodded, conceding him the point. "_That _is true. But, you're also overlooking the fact that every time we've come back to one another in the past ten years, it's always been related to your detour into the sunny land of Mid-Life Crises and the female component of its senior class of 1999 that's made my life hell in one way or another for over the last decade."

"Mid-Life Crisis?" Angel snorted, his jaw hardening and his shoulders tensing. "First off, I'm not in mid-life any more than you are, Miss Five-Hundred-Year-Old-Witch, okay?"

"Oh, really?" Brennan snapped. "Come on, Angel. She was barely seventeen when you went and dipped your wick in the would-be Slayer Fountain of Youth or what?"

"What?" he grunted. "What do you want me to tell you, Bren? We've talked about this before. Many times. Many, _many _times. As in a _lot_. As in a shitload of times. You already know why I got tangled up with Buffy. What I don't get is why do you keep bringing this up." Angel shook his head and sighed, closing his eyes in exasperation as he gritted his teeth with a frustrated growl even as he had a sneaking idea that the root of the fierce streak of overwhelming insecurity that Brennan had developed in their relationship had suspiciously emerged at the same time he'd moved to Sunnydale over a decade earlier. "It wasn't like this before,"he muttered under his breath. "You didn't always used to be like this. I know that. I remember that. So...come on, Bren. Do we have to go through this again?" The rigid stare she gave him answered his question. "Fine. She was pretty, and..." He sighed. "You were off doing your thing in Chicago. And I-I...I got my head wrapped around the idea of her, Bren. I didn't really love her. I loved the idea of her. I was an idiot. But...you know what happened with her, Bren. _You know_. She betrayed me...and that's all done with. _Over. _Now...please...can't we just talk about us? Because I don't want to talk about Buffy or anyone else but you, okay? Please."

"Right," Brennan seethed, clenching her fists to her side as she felt a flash of anger at the image of the blonde that had always made her feel more insecure than any of his other lovers in nearly a century and a half. "Fine."

"Well, fuck, Bren. You brought it up," Angel huffed. "Besides, second, you've got a lot of gall busting my stones about doing my thing here in California since you've been off getting your Ph.D. at Northwestern and tucking into your nice little life there in D.C. You didn't have time for me. As far as I could tell, you were perfectly happy to do your thing, satisfy your biological urges with whatever egghead guys were convenient. I know all about that, you don't see me bringing it up and brow beating you with it, do you? So, enough of ragging on me about my love life, 'cause I don't really want to talk about it anymore."

"Bullshit," she snorted. "Like it or not, we're not done talking about this, Angel. Because, after all that's happened—compelled or otherwise—I get to have my say and you're damn well going to listen because I'm the one who got stood up tonight because you were with another woman...no matter what extraordinary circumstances might've precipitated that occurrence." Angel opened his mouth, as if he were about to say something, but then abruptly shut it and remained quiet. Brennan took it as a sign that, however grudgingly, he was acknowledging her right to say her piece. "I've always said fine when it came to you, Angel," she began. "Whatever happened, especially with whatever woman, I said, fine...no big deal. It wasn't a big deal because you had your life and I had mine. But, you're damn right I'm going to get possessive when it's now. For three days every five years, I get you all to myself. That's been the deal, Angel, so you can see why I might be more than a little perturbed when my limited time gets usurped."

"So, wait," Angel said through gritted teeth, unable to help himself as he interrupted her despite his earlier attempt not to say anything to cut her off. "Does this mean you're gonna finally come clean about that professor at Northwestern you were fucking? I mean, how did that go exactly? Did you lure him into your bed by telling him you were a virgin or something and you really wanted him to be your first?" He laughed dismissively. "Hmmm? Or that loser you're seeing now...what's his name? Pete?"

"I wouldn't say that I'm seeing Pete now anymore than you were seeing the Mid-Life Crisis," Brennan snapped at him as soon as she realized that she rather liked the nickname for the Slayer that had consumed much of Angel's attention since he'd met her almost ten years before. "But, unlike some, I can admit that I'm fucking Peter because I'm not going to live the life of an cloistered nun no matter how many fantasies you may've had about me in a habit over the years. He may think there's something more which is why he bought a TV and plugged it in at my apartment because he likes to watch TV after sex, but I don't. It's just sex."

"He watches TV after sex?" he snickered. "Seriously? You're still catching your breath, and he's reaching for the remote? Nice. So much for the afterglow, huh? I guess in his case, the afterglow is screen burn-in, eh? What a tool." Angel's mind scampered back to her earlier comment. "So you're saying your thing with Pete isn't any more a serious thing than my thing with Buffy was? So you admit that Buffy was...that what I had with her is done...right?"

Brennan said not a word, responding only by narrowing her hard stare.

With a sigh, he said, "And, Bren, this thing that happened tonight—you know that Eve..she's not...she's not Buffy. Eve's not gonna replace you." Angel ran his hand through his wet hair and shook his head with . "Darla...Buffy...Cordy...they're all gone. What I had with them...what I tried to find with them...it's done."

Looking at him, she couldn't help but ask, "You say that now, Angel, but who's next in queue? Because I'm just waiting to see who the next twit is who rolls along and captures your romantic imagination. It always seems that just as one exits stage right, another woman comes along and—"

"Why can't it be _you_?" Angel said, cutting her off before her rant could attain any more momentum. "You're the one who's always captured my imagination. For a hundred forty three years, you've been that woman. Why can't the next woman be you?"

His comment caught Brennan off-guard, and, after hesitating for a moment, she fell back onto the familiar, well-trod path of resentful snark. "I-I...I don't know," she told him. "I hear what you're saying, but if what you say is true, why hasn't it been me yet, Angel? Why does it always seem like I turn around and—"

"Look, Bren," he said. "Back then, you know, you were still kind of chiseling out a new life for yourself, first in Chicago, and later in D.C. You wanted to make something of yourself, to find a new space where you could be this different person than the person you were in England. I understood all that. And, well..." He shrugged, glancing down at his bare feet before raising his gaze once more. "I didn't...I thought that if I asked you to be that woman, to build a life around me, you wouldn't be able to have the life you wanted because I'd be holding you back. I didn't want to burden you."

"You've never been a burden to me," she suddenly interjected.

Raising his hand in supplication, he nodded, "I know that, Bren. I know that now because...well, now, right now? Things are different now. I get that. I think that life you were carving out for yourself—you have it now, and I think we're both maybe at a place in our lives where we can be together, whether we're actually together in one place or just honest to ourselves that we live one life, even if we are apart much of the time. I think we're in a different place, the two of us, than we were just a few years ago." Angel narrowed his eyes and smiled. "This thing with Wolfram and Hart, I never thought of it this way when I took it on," he said. "But it's...things are different for me now, you know, than they were before. Maybe it sounds cliché, but the money and the standing, and, well, the power, I guess...I can offer you things that I couldn't before. I can be with you without depending on you in a way that would weigh you down." He blinked and nodded as if in response to a question posed only in his own mind. "And maybe it sounds wrong, but going from running a boutique demon-hunting detective agency to being CEO of the largest branch of the world's premier multidimensional law firm—well, it's forced me to learn to compromise. In a good way."

"Are you saying you're mellowing in your old age, Angel?" Brennan asked with a crooked grin.

"Well," he chuckled. "Yeah, I guess so. I think I'm in a better position now to figure out a way to weave my life into yours, so that we can have lives that are intertwined the way our souls have been for eighty years now." He stopped, his voice softening again, as he tilted his head and asked, "What about you? Don't you think so? Don't you think we can be for each other now what maybe we weren't able to before?"

Brennan swallowed heavily once and then said, "I think that I was ready to be whatever you needed me to be for you more than eighty years ago, Angel. I have been since that night. But, eighty years is a long time. In some ways, I've spent a lot of that alone and by myself...and that wasn't a small thing...getting over it. Getting over the part where you left me...no matter how unselfish or good your reasons for doing it were. The fact is, you still left me...or made me leave you rather. And, I've forgiven you for that, a long time ago, I did. But, the damage...the scars I have from that? They're still there, and I'm still skittish about the whole subject, for what I hope you can see is a very good reason on my part."

"I can't win," he muttered in frustration. "I tell you the truth, about why what happened with Buffy happened, and what a big fuck-up it was on my end for getting my head wrapped around that whole situation, and you say you believe me. I tell you what happened with Eve tonight, and you say you're trying to understand. Then I say that I want to be with you, and now that's not good enough."

"Well, I'm sorry!" Brennan muttered again. "But I have some trust issues here, Angel—"

"That you've got to try to get over if we're going to get anywhere, Bren," he replied.

"You mean like you've let go of Cordelia or Buffy?" Brennan asked. "Because I know you, Angel, and I know what a control freak you can be when you want to be. I'd bet a hundred dollar bill, cash on the barrel, that you're a single phone call away from a status report from whatever nurse you've got taking care of Cordelia to whatever surveillance you've got on Buffy just like you try to pull those little stunts with me." She paused and then asked, "Am I wrong?"

He scowled a bit, and as his face turned slightly red, Brennan knew she was right.

"Okay, then," Brennan muttered. "So, if I'm right like I think I am, do you think it's appropriate for you to be lecturing me on letting things—and people—go?"

"Fuck," he growled. "I-I...look? Cordy and Buffy? They're done, Bren. Done from the standpoint that they no longer have a hold on my heart. But just because what I had with them, or didn't have with them, is over, doesn't change the fact that I have to be careful that the ghosts of Christmas past don't come back to haunt me later. So do I keep them under surveillance? Hell, yes, I do. Damn straight, I do. But not because I want them in my life. No—quite the opposite. Because they're not in my life, and I want to keep it that way. You can either believe that or not. But yeah, I once I enjoyed the attentions of a beautiful girl or two in my past. And, yeah, I keep an eye on those girls now to make sure they aren't gonna try to worm their way back into my life. Surely that's not something that deserves me getting getting dusted or having my head chopped off, right?"

"We both know, Angel, that if I wanted to get back at you, putting a stake through your heart or cutting off your head would be the last things I'd do. I'd be...much more creative than that. Stakes and axes? Those are dull...boring and dull and unimaginative, and thus would be more in line with how the Slayer would respond, I think," she answered.

Angel's eyebrows sank hard over his eyes as he listened to her rant. "I'm not going to venture to guess what wickedness you'd unleash on me," he said. _Although I have an idea that it might involve having my dick grow out of my forehead, or shrink to the size of an acorn, _he thought. "But enough about Buffy, Bren. We've been down this road about fifty times already tonight, and I don't want to take another trip. She's a special girl who's trying to do some good in this world whom I got tangled up with, but that's done. So let's be done with it, too, you and me, okay?"

"Oh, please," Brennan grunted. "Spare me your standard lyrical paeans that are odes to her selfless crusade because if you keep that up, as close as I got to throwing up when I smelled Eve's taint on you, I think I _will _actually vomit if I have to hear any more of your insane drivel about the Slayer." She stopped and then arched an eyebrow at him as she added, "Don't tell me you've become inspired by the mere mention of her and want to go get your box of Crayola crayons so you can draw her a pretty picture, huh?"

"You're just jealous because I never drew you a picture," he scoffed. "Then again, I never sent her flowers the way I did to you." Angel glanced up at the ceiling tiles and shrugged. "If I'd known you would've been happy with a few of my distracted scribbles, I could've sure as hell saved a lot of money over the years. A sketchpad and a charcoal pencil would have been a lot less expensive than all those fresh-cut, greenhouse-grown daffodils I sent you."

"I'm not jealous," she hastily defended herself. "And, besides, I can't remember the last time you gave me daffodils. I'd forgotten to be quite honest."

"You're not jealous?" he asked, not quite believing her.

"No, I'm not," Brennan said, leveling a rigid glare at him.

"Like fuck you're not," he laughed. "You're so jealous that it's eating you up inside." He paused and then said, "You don't really expect me to believe that you haven't missed me bringing you the flowers, do you, Bren? You fucking liar. I saw your eyes earlier when you saw I got them for you. You lit up like a Christmas tree. So, don't tell me that they don't mean something to you."

"They might've once," she finally conceded to him. "But they don't anymore."

"Bullshit," he repeated. "That's a huge crock, and you know it. But, fine. Let's go back a minute. You want to talk about jealousy, though, Bren? Fine, we'll talk about jealousy. How about this? Interesting how you always seem to go for the tall, dark-haired types, hmmm? I mean, both of Professor What's-His-Name and Pistol Pete are pretty scrawny specimens if you ask me, but apparently, when you're in a pinch, they'll do. Isn't that so?"

"It's not a coincidence," Brennan snapped. "I have no qualms admitting it. I can't get wet unless I'm getting fucked by a man who looks like you, at least in the general characteristics, if not in all of the particulars. _There. _ I said it. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"Yeah," he nodded, a pleased glint coming into his eyes. "It was."

"You and your fucking male ego," Brennan snarled. "Fine. It's the truth. I'm not sure when it happened or where, but it's not a coincidence. When you're not there to fuck me, I find someone to make do. Big fucking deal." She stopped and then added, "Would that the same could be said for me, but it appears that your hard-ons have only been turned by small girls with small tits—be they blonde mid-life crises, clairvoyant if air-headed billing clerks with Hollywood aspirations, or overtly-perky liaisons to the Senior Partners, huh?" She paused and then chewed her lip as she added, "Of course, your taste in women has been rather...inconsistent...in some ways. I mean, Darla. She was understandable. And, she had a certain...style. But, the others?" She stopped and shook her head, "I mean, why I'll never understood what you saw in Cordelia when obviously there was a point when Fred would've fallen at your feet if you'd just given her any indication that you were interested in her." Staring at him, she added, "Let me guess. Cordelia's tits won out over Fred's brains, huh?"

"That's not...that's not what happened," Angel said, averting his eyes as he reached for the towel rack, knitting his brow in frustration when Brennan pushed his arm away. He grunted and brought his eyes back up to hers, but saw in her pale blue eyes a flicker that told him he wasn't going to be able to dodge the question. "Fred...well...it's, uhhhh..." As Brennan's cold eyes narrowed again, he found himself suddenly at a loss for words. "Look, I think Fred kind of had a thing for me when we first got back from Pylea because I saved her. It was, well, an innocent and kind of a little crush, maybe? But I pushed her away, Bren. I didn't want to hurt her or lead her on, because I couldn't be with her in the way she deserved to be with someone. So I turned her down because, contrary to what you may think, I don't actually fall in love with every woman that chases after me."

He saw her eyes brighten a little at his words, then the brightness dulled again as he watched her think.

"I'm not talking about her not being Buffy or Cordy, either, Bren," he said quietly.

She cleared her throat and then asked, "Then, who are you talking about?"

"Do you even have to ask, lass?" he said, his face taking on a gentle look as he explained. "If I'd have gotten together with Fred, it'd be like...well, like getting together with Bren without getting together with the real Bren. Fred, don't get me wrong. She's great. She's smart and strong and brilliant and has such a warm and giving heart. You'd love her, you know. You guys have a lot in common. But...she's like, well, a Bren-lite, I guess. She's just not, well, you know, Bren...she's just not _you_."

"That's a really nice save," Angel," she told him. "But somehow, I-I...well, look at it from my point of view."

"What?" he asked.

She chewed her lips and said, "You've shown me pictures of your team. From what I recall...well, it may be silly, but you know part of what my job is at the Jeffersonian is to look at the evidence and see what it says and then draw conclusions based on what the facts tell me is the truth. And, to be perfectly honest, looking at this situation from that perspective, well the evidence is in the form of the women that you've been romantically attached to or attracted to over the years. And, as I said, since both Fred and Cordelia are brunettes, neither one of them has an advantage, unless they were to dye their hair blonde. But, now you're telling me that you chose to be with Cordelia instead of Fred because Fred was too much like me for your comfort. So, I suppose, in a way that does make sense since I didn't have that piece of information before. I must admit that I've been trying to figure out why you developed such feelings for Cordelia and all I kept coming back to, in comparison to Fred, was that Cordelia had the bigger pair of tits. Now, they're not as full as mine, but they were a lot bigger than the Slayer's or even Darla's. But, even that being said, I-I—"

"Wait," he said with raised eyebrows, his forehead creasing as he tried to suppress a laugh. _Holy hell, woman. You've assembled a mental dossier on every woman I've been with and run some kind of comparative analysis of their features versus yours. Holy hell, Bren. Come on, now. _Angel reached up and scratched the back of his head. "You've put a lot of thought into this, haven't you?"

Brennan glared, but then she let out a puff of breath. "It's something that's always vexed me—why you seem to go for the blondes, and the smaller-breasted types since it seems to be one of the very few constants that you've had in the entire time I've known you. Cordelia being the sole exception to type, of course." She stopped, looked down at the ground, and then slowly shook her head. "So, tell me Angel—tell me I'm wrong. Tell me this one wasn't any different. Prove that my thesis is off because, I want to know, what did this one look like?"

"Look," he said. "I told you, the thing with Eve tonight, it wasn't something I even wanted. I don't see why it—"

"Then, if you didn't want it, didn't like it, didn't enjoy it in some small way, then why won't you just tell me what she looks like?" she repeated, suddenly cutting him off as she thought of what she knew of basic compulsion spells and felt a knot of dread tighten in her stomach as she tried to see if she could get him to tell her the truth or not. "What's the big deal? Why won't you tell me? Why?"

"She's petite," he said instantly, suddenly realizing that his longtime lover had fully dug in on this point, chomping down on the issue like a pit bull, and nothing he could say or do would get her to let go of it until he bit the bullet and told her. "And too perky. Obnoxious, really. She has pale skin, dark eyes, small tits...with reddish hair—more red than yours. She's..." Angel shook his head. "She's got _nothing _on you, Bren. What do I need to tell you to get you to believe me? " He lifted his gaze to meet hers as he waited for a response. When he didn't get any, he pressed forward anyway. "Bren, _you're _the one—the _only_ one—who's held my imagination...and a whole hell of a lot more than that...for about the last hundred fifty years, alright? Eve is nothing. _Nothing. _What I did with her tonight? It was nothing. Look, the fact of the matter is, it disgusts me." He rubbed the excess water out of his wavy dark hair with his hand, splattering more water on the floor as he took a long deep breath, as if he could somehow cleanse himself of the strange revulsion he felt at having been with Eve. "But I wasn't in control of it, and I sure as hell can't undo it." Angel narrowed his eyes as he watched her features harden as he described Eve. "So where does that leave us, Bren?"

She avoided chewing on her bottom lip again by biting down on her inner cheek. After a moment's hesitation, knowing that she only had two choices left—either leave and let him go or stay and be with him—she tried to figure out a way while she could do the later while at the same time regaining some control that she felt had been taken from her. Grabbing the towel behind her, she bunched it in her hands and then tossed it at him. "That leaves us waiting for you to get dressed," she said tersely. "We need to go downstairs...and unless you really want to see how powerful I can really be during this time of the year, you better hope I don't run into her. It won't be pretty if I do."

"Mmmmm," he murmured, pulling the towel over his head and passing over his hair and rubbing his face as he growled quietly, as much in frustration at himself as at her. "I have to say, though, Bren," he said, reaching down to dry off his crotch, smirking as he caught her looking. "I've always found it hot when you got all aggressive and possessive...so territorial about me. I _really _like it, actually." He secured the towel around his waist and stood there with his hands on his hips, finally taking a long look at her. The snug cut of her black dress with its plunging neckline emphasized her curves in a way that made Angel's balls hitch. He gave her a lazy smile as he said, "Maybe us running into Eve wouldn't be such a bad thing after all, if it gets you all _rawrrr, _you know..."

She stopped and rolled her eyes at him as she said, "I thought we got this point through your thick skull a long time ago—if I didn't want to do a three-way with Darla, why would I possibly want to break precedent now and take up with the demon-spawn trollop that you just tapped?" She stopped and then narrowed her eyes at him. "Wait—you're doing this on purpose, aren't you?"

"Maybe," Angel said with a grin. "What do you think? You've been standing here for fifteen, almost twenty minutes staring at me naked in my shower and watching me get hard watching you watch me. But it seems like the only way I can get you worked up enough to the point that I keep hoping you might break and we could get past the chit-chat seems to be if I rile you up about me and other women, huh?" He held her gaze for a steady moment and then asked, "Or maybe I'm wrong, and you aren't close to that breaking point like I think you are, and we should break out the backgammon board to pass the time tonight, huh?" He ran his hand through his damp hair and then smiled again as he shook his head. "Hmmmm...no, on second thought. I don't think so. While you have become very good at compartmentalizing, Bren, I don't think even you're _that _good. You want me. Right now. You're so close to throwing down with me right here, that I think if I wait just a couple more minutes, I might finally be able to properly christen this shower stall, hmmm, lass? Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you're not close to pouncing on me to mark your territory. I dare you."

"You dare me? Brennan asked him, a crooked smile on her lips, as some of his brashness again softened her demeanor. "Really, Angel?"

"Yup," he nodded. "So, what do you say, Bren?"

At this Brennan laughed and asked, "You really think _you're _good, huh?"

"Well, yeah," he said, closing the distance between them with two steps and, after a quick feint towards her curvy hips, placed his hands on her slender shoulders. "Sure I am. And, more importantly, I think you know it, too."

"I know you _think _you're good," she retorted, but once again didn't push him away, and he took that as a positive sign.

"Huh," he grunted, licking his lips. "If I wasn't good, you wouldn't have put up with me for the last century and a half. Come on, Bren. You're a gorgeous woman, and we both know you could have any man you wanted. _Any _man. But somehow you keep coming back to me."

"Maybe," Brennan replied noncommittally.

"Mmmm," he murmured, his mouth breaking into a lazy, crooked grin as he gave her shoulders a soft squeeze. He tilted his head to the side and looked into her eyes for a few long moments, trying to gauge whether she was going to sucker-punch him, knee him in the nuts, or lasso him with enchanted ropes and tie him to some fixed object in his penthouse apartment. Seeing a glimmer in her eye that suggested that interest rather than irritation was the prevailing emotion, he made a split-second decision to make his move.

"I haven't slept a decent night of sleep in a week, Bren," he admitted. "You know why?"

"Why?" she asked, a bit of the snark and anger have faded from the edges of her voice.

"I've been on edge for a week...maybe more," he said. "Because I remember damn inch of this body of yours. The way your skin feels so warm and silky to the touch. The way you smell. The delicious little kittenish sounds you make when I touch you. The way you taste." He licked his lips at the thought. "The sound of your voice whether you're railing at me in anger or teasing me because you're feeling playful. Your laugh. Your eyes. All of it. Every little damn detail. And you know what?"

"What?"

"Remembering you like that? And knowing you were coming to see me after we've been apart so long? Well, it was like torture. I missed you, Bren, you and this insanely gorgeous body of yours. I missed you, very _very _much."

Brennan arched a skeptical eyebrow. "Did you now?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said with a small nod. "I did."

"Well," she told him. "You sure have a funny way you have of showing it, then."

Angel's head dropped to his chest with a mildly exasperated sigh. "You know, earlier," he said, squinting his eyes as he looked at her, noting by the way her jaw tightened that she knew what he was referring to without him having to utter Eve's name again. "I kept wanting to reach down and grab her tits, you know, but...well...there wasn't anything to grab. All skin and bones, she was." He rolled his shoulders back and shuddered at the cloudy memory. "Nothin'," he muttered. "She's got nothin' on you. Nothin'." He looked down the low scoop of her neckline and let his gaze trace the round, porcelain swell of her bosom. "'Cause _these? _ These here?"

A low hum sounded from Angel's throat as he turned his hands and drew them down the sides of her arms. He smiled faintly as he enjoyed the warmth of her skin, which burned hot against his palms in a way that no other woman's—certainly not Darla's, but not even Buffy's or Cordelia's—ever did. Before his hands reached her wrists, he brought them up to her breasts, which were displayed quite prominently by the low-cut neckline of her black dress. The gathered neckline seemed somehow to drew his eyes towards her cleavage, and he felt his fingertips tingle as his thumbs skated along the round underside of her upthrust breasts as his hands cupped the sides.

"Hmmm," he murmured, pressing them together to even further accentuate the deep cleft between them. "These...these are what I was thinking of every time I reached for her and couldn't find what I was looking for—"

"Angel," she growled, but let her voice trail off, leaving the sentence—be it a warning, a threat, or a simple comment about the weather—remain unfinished.

"You have something nice under here for me?" he asked, releasing each breast as he quickly slid his forefingers underneath the sleek black fabric and felt a wide band of mesh. Intrigued, he moved his fingers deeper beneath the plunging neckline of the dress and felt a silky lace pattern under his fingertips. "Mmmm, so naughty," he murmured. "Now _this _definitely isn't your normal style," he said. "At least, not for a long, long time now." He let the pads of his index fingers skim very lightly over the hard points of her nipples, hardly making contact at all, and a toothy grin broke across his face as he heard a faint sigh pass from Brennan's lips.

"I'm not in the mood to be teased, Angel," she growled, her narrowed eyes fixed on his gleaming, dark almond-shaped ones as she felt him withdraw his fingers and step away from her. "Verbal or otherwise."

"Teasing implies that one party has no intent to follow through on the implied offer, Bren," he said. "And I have every intention of following through if you'll let me."

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-tbc-

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**A/N2- **_Alright. Yeah, yeah. We know...cruel cliffhanger. But, come on, peeps. This is a dharmashera piece. Surely you were expecting at least one of them, weren't you? The bad new is Part III is where we really see if/how Angel follows through or not...and how Bren responds. The good news is Part III is written, edited, and queued to go. It'll be posting in approximately eight hours or so. Until then, feel free to pass the time by dropping us a note and let us know what you think of Part II. Coming up next: a few more canonical Angel characters make their appearances. Sound interested? Then, stick with us for the epic conclusion._


	3. Part III: Marking Her Territory

**The After Party**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **_Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from Bones or Angel... or anything else. Yes, we're wrecking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? _::blinks:: _Good. Then, moving on―_

**Summary: **_After Angel's romp with Eve at the Wolfram and Hart Halloween Party, a surprise visitor from Washington D.C. ends up in his penthouse and asks where he's been. Set at the end of Angel episode 5x05 - "The Life of the Party." Bones/Angel crossover. Very, very AU. Sequel to "Toe to Toe," "Barging In," "Making Him Beg" and "Comfort on the Edge of Reason." Complete. _

**Logistical Notes: **_For those who are wondering, in Bones chronology, this story would take place two years before season 1...or one year before Brennan worked the Gemma Arrington case with Booth._

**A/N**: _So, here it is, Part III, i.e., the pretty epic (at least, we think so) rocking conclusion to the fifth piece of our Angel(us)/Brennan story arc. Thanks so much, once again, to those who have reviewed. To those who haven't, we can't say this enough. Please consider dropping us a line so we know what people think of this series. Even if it's just a word or two, it means more to us than we can say. One thing we noticed in the last piece is that some people (like Angel) were getting quite frustrated with Bren. All we can say is, remember that we made an 80-year jump between where we left the pair in "Comfort on the Edge of Reason" and where we picked up in this piece. They are not the same people they were then, and it's with good cause. Now, do we promise that you will start to get glimpses of what happened to the pair in those years (and how they each responded to canonical events of BTVS and Angel)? Yes. But, it may just not at the pace that everyone wants. However, we like to that we're emulating the brilliant, if Puck-like, Joss Whedon in this. Suffice to say, there's always a reason why Angel and Bren are acting as they are. You may not like it, you may not understand it, and if you don't have the patience to wait to find out why characterization has been written this way...well, then you probably won't like the rest of this story, let alone the rest of this series, so you probably shouldn't read on further as we can guarantee it will be a frustrating experience for you. We think you got a bit of the missing background that should help you to understand that in the last part and there is more to come. But, it won't be a quick or an easy journey. We hope that will not deter such readers, but if it does, we know there's not anything we can do about that. Now, moving on...  
_

**UNF Alert: **_::looks:: Yup. It's still here. If you read Part II, then you know why. It still applies for Part III (who are we kidding? Part III is why it deserves it in the first place). Consider yourselves duly warned.  
_

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**Part III: Marking Her Territory**

* * *

To make good on his promise, focusing for a moment on the bright gleam in her eyes, Angel moved in again, cupping her full breasts in his large hands and squeezing them gently, a low hum sounding from his throat as he felt the firm pebbles of her nipples press into his broad palms. "Yes, I'm definitely gonna follow through this time. And more importantly, this time I think you won't stop me, lass. This time, I think you're gonna let me," he murmured, squeezing again and grinning at the way she raised her chin as a breathy sigh passed from her slender pink lips. He leaned in, brushing his lips against the edge of her square jaw as he brought his mouth to the flat space in front of her ear. "I think you will," he whispered, his warm breath tickling the fine whisps of hair on her temple. "It's been too long, Bren. Too long, and I know you want this." He rubbed his faintly stubbled jaw against her cheek. "I want you, lass. Always you. Always. Please...

Brennan moaned softly at feeling his feather-light kisses fall along the line of her jaw. "I-I..."

"Come on, Bren," he pleaded softly. "You know you want this. You know you want me. So stop fighting it. Just tell me I can, and I'll do what I know you're starting to drip with want of me doing to you. All you have to do it tell me what you want. Tell me I can—"

She hissed again as he flicked his thumb over one pert nipple before she tensed, bit her lip, and shook her head. "No—"

Sighing, he cursed softly, "Fuck, Bren."

"That's not how this is going to go, Angel," Bren muttered. "So quit messing around. Quit teasing me."

"Isn't that the point, Bren?" he groaned, taking a half-step backwards and letting his hands fall away from her chest. "You've spent the last hundred fifty years teasing me. Now that I finally figure out how to return your serves, you get cranky about it and don't want to play..."

Pursing her lips, she scowled at him as she took a step forward and jammed her finger into the flesh of his still-damp pectoral muscle. "That's right, Angel," she growled. "I'm not playing. After the games you've played tonight, I'm all done playing."

Angel quirked an eyebrow. "I'm not playing games, woman," he said with a frown. "But clearly you've lost your sense of humor. That's okay. Fine. I get it. So—you wanna see my office?"

"Wait," she said, her eyes wide in disbelief. "You think that—whether it was of your own volition or not—the fact that you were between another woman's legs two hours ago...on _tonight _of all nights, is something I should find...humorous?"

"Bren," he said sharply. "Listen, alright? Are you listening? 'Cause this is an important point, okay? I fucked Eve, but I didn't _want _to fuck Eve. If I could go back and keep all that from happening, I would. Believe me. But short of going to the Powers That Be and asking to turn back the clock, which I've already done once and I probably won't get to do again, I can't undo the past. Woman, you know as well as I do that I've got more shit I'd want to undo than you can shake a stick at, alright? I can't change what's done. And I can't own this...this thing that happened tonight. Am I sorry it happened? Hell yes. Can I change it? Hell no."

She blinked at him for a minute, pressing her lips together in a firm line, and her voice cracked a bit as she said, "So, what? I'm just supposed to pretend that it doesn't bother me? That I'm not hurt by this? I just need to what...get over it? And be done with it? Well, you know what, Angel? I'm sorry, but I can't."

"No," he admitted. "But at what point do you stop your bitching and busting my balls about something I couldn't stop from happening and can't undo now that it _has _happened?" He took a deep breath and tried to tamp down his rising frustration, knowing that she was very close to the end of her quick-burning fuse. "Please, Bren. It happened. It's done. There's nothing we can do to change it except to let it go. So come on, okay?" He took slow, hesitant step towards her, reaching his hand out to touch her arm. "Please."

"Could _you _just let it go that easily?" she asked him in a quiet voice. "If our positions were reversed—and I understand about your point about your own choice in the matter, I do—but if you found out that you'd come all the way to D.C. for what was supposed to be _our _three days out of the entire five years...and later you found out the reason why you couldn't find me when you got there was because I was busy getting worked over by some other guy...are you saying it wouldn't bother you at all?"

"It _would_ bother me," he agreed. "But if you told me you'd got caught up in a magic enchantment of some kind, like what I've been telling you? I'd be frustrated, and pissed, but not at _you. _I'd be frustrated and pissed at the situation, Bren. But not at you. I get your anger, Bren. But don't lash out at _me_. This isn't my fault. I'm trying to do the right thing here, okay, I really am, but I'm feeling like nothing I can say or do would matter at this point. So...this is it. You can either choose to let it go, Bren...really let it go. You can let go of it, and we can enjoy this time we have together, which we never seem to get enough of...or not." His voice dropped in pitch, leaving the statement unfinished as he couldn't quite bear to even utter a single sentence that contained the word 'leave' in it just in case he was wrong, and she might end up being the one who left him this time. Still, feeling a need to say something, he added, "If you want me, Bren, and if you want to be with me, the way I want to be with you, then tell me. Because you know what I want.._who _I want. But either way...make your choice and let it be done."

She was quiet for a moment and took a deep breath before she walked past him, her body tense as she called over her shoulder, "Get dressed."

"Okay," he said, pulling a second towel off the rack and wiping the last of the water off his back before hanging the damp towel on the hook and walking back into the bedroom.

She sat on the edge of the bed, staring out at the Los Angeles skyline as she heard him shuffling behind her. She was quiet until he stilled behind her. He'd pulled on a black pin-stripe button down shirt although he still had the fluffy dark blue towel wrapped around his waist.

Not bothering to look towards him, she asked, "Do you remember it?"

"What?"

"Do you remember it?" she asked a second time, her voice a bit raw as she looked away from him.

"What?" he asked again. "You mean the...the thing that happened with Eve?"

"Yes."

He took a deep breath. "Not really," he said. "Like I said before...well, that's why, you know, when you asked me earlier, how many times, I was kind of unsure. I don't remember much of it. I don't remember any of the details, and I don't really remember how..." He paused for a second and then shook his head. "I just...it's the feelings, okay? Those I remember. There was want and this frenzied furious thing between us...that I remember—the want most of all."

This time it was Brennan's turn to be quiet before she turned her head and looked at him, "Want of her or want of release?"

Angel stood there for a moment in silence as he thought about the question and blinked as a memory—of the way Eve had kissed him, her mouth grasping at his in a way that was wild and insatiable, drawing his tongue into her mouth as they tumbled into his office—flashed before his eyes. "Want of release," he said solemnly. "I don't think it was about her. As far as I remember, it was all about...just the sex itself. Like the figurative thinking with one's dick. My brain wasn't engaged. It was like I was a marionette and someone else was holding the strings. That probably doesn't make any sense." He turned and looked away with a heavy sigh as he distractedly surveyed the slacks hanging in his closet.

She stood up and tilted her head towards him, and he saw her eyes were wide as she licked her lips and she stared at him for a long minute. "Do you still want me?" she asked him softly.

"Yes," he whispered. After a moment, he turned back to face her. "Yes, Bren," he said more firmly. "More than ever. I _do _want you. I told you that, I'm just not certain why you don't believe me. I do want you. I always want you." His sad brown eyes blinked as he looked at her. "If...that is...you still want me to want you."

"I'm feeling a great amount of emotional turmoil at the current moment," she told him, her voice still low and silky as she sat down again on the edge of his bed. "A _great_ amount."

"I know you are," he said quietly, the tenor of his voice deep and rich as he looked at her with his warm brown eyes. "You're part of me, Bren," he said with a swallow. "I don't...I don't like to see you hurting. Please, Bren..."

Brennan raised her gaze to meet his and he saw her eyes shimmering with raw and exposed feeling as she said, "Angel, I...I..."

"Bren," he whispered, closing the distance between them in a couple of steps. For a moment, he stood in front of her as she sat on his bed. After a fraction of second's pause, he took another step forward and put his knee on the edge of the mattress, then pressed her gently back onto the bed. The moment her back hit the mattress, he lowered himself over her and, leaning in, kissed her, his mouth grasping for hers as his nostrils flared at the smell of her. She returned his kiss, hesitantly at first and then more enthusiastically as their tongues twirled together in a battle for dominance. As he savored the taste and smell of her, and the way her warm, wet tongue worked his mouth, he felt a renewed wave of want surge within him and he reached his hand up, cupping her breast in his hand and swiping his thumb across the erect point of her nipple that he could feel even through the fabric of her dress and bra.

She mumbled something incoherent as she pulled away from his kiss, arching her back off the mattress at his touch.

"You look fantastic in black," he rasped, licking his lips before leaning in for another kiss. Just as he was going to touch her mouth again, he saw the lone daffodil laying on the nightstand table. He pulled away and reached for it, drawing it beneath his nostrils and inhaling its fragrance before he smiled and brushed its silky petals over the swell of her breasts, just above the neckline of her dress. "Absolutely gorgeous," he whispered as he quietly snapped the stem in half and tucked the pale yellow bloom behind her ear. "Your skin looks like marble," he murmured as he lowered his mouth to her neck and began kissing his way back up to her mouth. "Not like mine...it's not hard or cool to the touch. But warm and soft and vibrant. The black..." He smiled against her skin with each soft kiss. "Makes your skin..." She hummed as he reached her pharynx and he could feel the vibration beneath his lips. "Look almost translucent..." He kissed her chin. "Like moonlight." Angel smiled and moved to cover her mouth with his.

Brennan turned her head to the side, dodging his lips, which fell instead on the flat space along her jaw immediately in front of her ear. "Red, too," he mumbled as he placed a line of feather-light kisses along the delicate edge of her square jaw. Letting his mouth linger before dropping to her throat, he said. "I still dream about that red velvet dress you wore that night, and the way you looked at Covent Garden." The tip of his tongue flicked at her skin before his lips closed around the area he'd just wetted and gave a gentle suck. "God, you looked so good that night. But black? Tonight? Like you're wearing tonight? Well—wow...black, _black _is so your color."

"It's always been a good color on you, too,"she told him reluctantly, still angry at him but forgetting the exact reasons as to why she was so upset with each second that passed. She unconsciously leaned her head back to expose her creamy neck to his ministrations. "You look far better in black than you do in any other color...especially that stupid orange color you were wearing earlier."

"I hate orange," he snickered as he drew another, harder sucking kiss on her neck along the round edge of her pharynx. "But Lorne insisted I wear something more festive. Big fucking mistake that was."

Angel slid his hand along the inside of her calf, relishing in the smoothness of her skin as his palm coasted over her knee and on to the silky skin of her inner thigh. The towel he'd wrapped around his waist fell to the floor as he hitched up the skirt of her dress and settled into the space between her thighs. He'd stepped out of the shower half-hard, but as he felt the soft warmth of Brennan's thighs against his cool, still-damp skin, he felt himself harden fully and his balls begin to ache again. His erection brushed briefly against her panties, and he groaned, leaning harder into her as his hands once more began to roam over the curves of her ample chest.

"I want you, Bren," he sighed, his tongue darting out to lick his bee-stung lips before he bent his head down again to resume his mouth's explorations. His lips worked at the skin of her neck, finally coming to rest at the notch at the base of her neck as he palmed her breasts, squeezing them in his hands. "You're like a drug, woman," he said in a low voice. "The more I have of you, the more I want. You're like the finest opium. I need more...more...more," he murmured into her ear.

Angel pulled his mouth away from her throat, glancing down to admire the faint red mark he'd left there, then moved back to plunder her sweet mouth, which gaped open slightly. He kissed her again, pleased that he had barely brushed his lips against hers before she reached up and grasped for his kiss, covering his mouth with hers as she waited for his tongue to meet hers halfway. Brennan murmured into their kiss one more time before pulling away from him once more.

"Enough," she growled after several long moments of enjoying the way he kissed her as she swatted his hand away and pushed him off of her. "That's not—you're not...no," she said as she struggled to put distance between them. "You're...you're...not getting out of the metaphorical doghouse that easily, Angel." She rolled away from him and then stood up on shaky feet.

"Why not?" he pressed her. "You want me. Tell me you don't, and we'll both know you're lying."

"I do want you," she admitted. "I do...but not here. First...first we need to go downstairs."

Sighing heavily, he rolled into a sitting position as she said, "Now?" He winced at feeling, once again, like Tantalus, in front of whom the much-desired refreshing cup of cool water was proffered only to have it be yanked away at the very moment he had it nearly in his grasp to finally quench his insatiable thirst. His balls ached with want of her, and he dreaded having to wait while she toyed with him.

"Now," she nodded firmly, as she put a hand on her hip and stared at him expectantly.

"Fuck," he growled as he pushed himself off the bed and approached his dresser with a petulant grunt, jerking a pair of boxers out of the drawer, pulling them on with a scowl on his face.

_Fucking parties, _he grumbled silently. _I hate fucking parties. I always have. No good deed goes unpunished, huh? I let Lorne do this party thing, get myself roped into going, and this is what happens. Fuck me_.

"Damn it," he muttered under his breath as he walked to the closet, quickly yanking a pair of black trousers off the hanger. Brennan had to bite her lip to keep from laughing, but nonetheless enjoyed watching his frustration mount. "Fucking bullshit," he grumbled to himself. "Son of a bitch." He quickly threw them on and zipped himself up as the hanger clattered in the closet. He walked past her into the outer room and barked, "Fine. Come on, then. Follow me."

Given what had just happened in the bedroom, every sense that he had was heightened...aroused and attuned to _her_. He could sense her want and possessiveness, and the gloating that she wore as a mask to cover up her frustration and jealousy, and all these combined to put him on edge. He didn't even need to take a deep breath to inhale her scent deeply to know that she wanted him almost as much as he wanted her in that moment...even if she was being rather...difficult...about things. As they rode downstairs in his private elevator, his eyes darted over to look at her body. He was contemplating what she might do to him if he turned around, slammed her up against the elevator wall, and saw how quickly he could yank up her dress, push aside her panties, and shove himself inside her.

The idea was exquisitely tempting.

However, she slowly shook her head, and—almost as if she could hear what he was thinking—said with a sharp look, "No way. Nothing's going to happen until we get to your office, so don't even think about it."

Angel's brow quickly sank low and hard over his eyes as he pouted his lips and grunted. "Suit yourself," he muttered. _She gets away with this because she's mind-rippingly hot, and she can drive me crazy, and I still care about her and want her even more...and she fucking knows it, _he grumbled to himself. _She knows my balls are just about to fall off here, and the damn elevator is full of the smell of her. The smell is hanging in the air like fog. It's only by a damn miracle—or some kind of magic trick—that it's not dripping down her legs, she's so horned up. She's just doing this to torture me. She says she doesn't like sports. Huh. Right. Her favorite sport is Professional Angel Torture, played with a single set of blue balls._ Angel took a couple of steps back and leaned against the railing in the back of elevator and sighed, letting his eyes skate down the back of her dress, along the small of her back to the flare that opened up to the curve of her shapely ass. _She's only been doing that for a fucking century and a half. You think I'd know better by now. But I keep falling for it every time_—_hook, line, and sinker. Fuck me...she...I...I-I mean, shit._

Scowling, he knew he'd already started to give off a certain brooding vibe. A few moments later, the pair of them found themselves standing in Angel's office. He pointed at the still sleeping form of Lorne that was draped over one of the chaise lounges. "If you want to blame someone, here's your guy," he told her with a quietly ironic chuckle.

Brennan arched an eyebrow as she looked over at him and asked, "What happened to him?"

In a quiet voice, Angel replied, "Uhhh, it's kind of a long story, Bren, but Lorne hasn't slept in a month, and he really deserves some uninterrupted shut-eye, so maybe we could hurry up and do whatever it is that you wanted to do here and get out so we, uhhh, could get back to what we were doing upstairs before you decided you wanted to see my office for whatever fucking weird reason, huh?"

Angel met Brennan's intense blue eyes as she studied him. He waited for her to say something, and started to grow impatient the longer she remained quiet. After a minute, she finally said in a low voice, "Where did it happen?"

A wicked grin broke across his lips as he realized what she was doing and he pointed in the vague direction of the reddish-brown leather couch that sat in the far corner of the office. For a few moments, he stared over the couch and out the window behind it, distracted by the twinkling lights of the L.A. skyline as he felt a crackling of arousal pulse from the pit of his belly into his extremities. "There," he grunted, his teeth gritted as his balls tightened at seeing the aggressive flash of territoriality in her pale eyes.

Brennan pursed her lips and tilted her head as she said, "Three times, huh?"

"Yeah," Angel said quietly. "I'm pretty sure. She came twice the first time, only once the second time, I think, because we sorta...well, we got interrupted and never really had a...err, a complete finale."

Slowly, Brennan walked over to the far side of the couch and stood next to it so that Angel still had a clear view of her body. She toed off one of her black pumps and kicked it aside. She then followed suit with the other one as she came to stand before him in her bare feet. Lifting up one of her arms, she reached around and tugged at the zipper that was hidden in the side of her dress. As she slowly unzipped the dress, it fell loose and allowed her to quickly push it off of her shoulders to fall in a nearly silent _whoosh_ of fabric that pooled at her feet. Stepping out of it, she stood before him clad only in a black lace underwire bra and a pair of matching black lace tanga panties. Taking one of the leather cushions off the back of couch, she gently tossed it on the ground in front of her.

Angel watched each move she made with intense interest. When she stood before him and waited, he took a step closer to her and said, "What are you doing, Bren?"

"I wore black just for you," she said with a nod of her head. "Remember? I know it's your favorite color. I didn't forget."

"I remember," he nodded in appreciation as his eyes hungrily ran over her body. "And, no, I didn't think you'd forget...then again, you never do." He stopped and then said, "But, seriously—what are you doing, Bren?"

"What's it look like, Angel?" she said, her voice low and throaty. Slowly, she lowered herself onto the leather cushion, positioning herself so that her knees were slightly parted, and she waited for him to come closer.

He licked his lips in want and took a step forward. "I think it looks like you're finally doing what I've been trying to get you to do for over a hundred and fifty years." Angel's eyes were immediately drawn to her mouth—her smirking, thin-lipped mouth that he'd kissed a thousand times and had felt take him in, all the way until he could almost feel the back of her throat, but which had never taken him all the way to the edge of oblivion and swallowed everything he'd had to give her. He bit the inside of his lip as his hard flesh twitched and strained against the black gabardine of his trousers.

She couldn't help but smirk as she said, "You act like I've never sucked your cock before, Angel."

Blinking at her quiet words, he said with a small smirk of his own, "Sucked on...yes. Sucked off? Nope. Not once...in almost a century and a half, despite all those promises of yours...and how hard I've tried to get you to do it." He smirked. "No pun intended."

She laughed again as she opened her mouth slightly and said, "So, is this your way of saying you _don't _want to finally find out what you've been missing out on?"

"Now, did I say that?" he told her, taking another step towards her. He cocked his head to the side and looked at her, his eyes tracing the fringe of her straightened auburn hair, down the side of her face and along the straight, square line of her jaw. "I just don't get it," he said. "How can you go from so pissed off at me that you wanted to leave not an hour ago to stripping down to that fuckable sexy little number that you're wearing and offering to do something to me that I've been wanting you to do to me for a very long time?"

Realizing that he was close enough to touch, she reached out and grabbed him by placing one hand on each of his bony hips. Pulling him towards her, she caught hold of the waistband of the suit pants he'd grabbed from his closet and pulled on after Brennan had pushed him away from their very disconcerting makeout session that had happened on his bed. She moved one hand from one of his hip to the button at the top of his waistband and plucked it free. Very quickly, she unzipped his fly, and she gave him a deep, throaty purr when she felt him shiver at her touch. As she tugged at the pants, she pulled them off his hips and peeled them down his legs.

He was already hard when she'd unbuttoned his trousers, and the moment she pushed them off his body, and his cock sprang free of its confines, he felt his balls tighten and his throat go dry at the same time. "Bren—" he groaned.

She looked up at him and said, "Mine. Tonight...and for the next three days, you're _mine_. Not anyone else's. And, so I'm going to claim what's mine...because I think you want to be claimed, don't you, Angel? Isn't that what you want me to do?"

Angel blinked and looked at her, his mouth hanging open with surprise. "Yes," he gulped. "I've been yours for a long time, Bren." He shivered at the feel of her touch and added, "You've gotta know that."

"I do," she admitted. "Even if I forget it sometimes because you drive me mad, you know that?" she asked him as she coasted the flat of her palms over the corded muscles of the front of his thighs. "You're going to make me as crazy as Drusilla is before you're done."

Angel's eyes darkened at the reference to the sensitive, innocent young woman with the second sight whose suffering his prior self had turned into a sadistic piece of what would later be called 'performance art'—the eternal suffering of a tortured soul, damned by the endlessness of her own agony which Angelus had engineered with a ruthlessness that had surprised even his own sire.

"Bren," he groaned, his brow creasing deeply and his jaws hardening as he winced, trying desperately to flush the memory of what he believed his most unredeemable atrocity in a century and a half of atrocities of unspeakable cruelty on a scale unmatched by any one man before or since. "Don't...please—don't speak of that to me, not even as a joke."

Brennan's eye twitched and narrowed at hearing the gravity of his response, and for a moment, she regretted her words. Then the wave of sympathy receded, leaving behind the anger that had preceded it. "I'm not joking, Angel," she said gruffly. "This—this thing we've done, the last eighty-some odd years, stepping out of our lives for three days every five years, to be together—it's itself a sort of insanity. And then, after stepping out of my life, the one I've worked so hard at building for myself in D.C. these last few years, and coming out here to be with you...to be with _you, _Angel, and to find myself stood up while you're down here fucking another woman...this see-saw, yo-yo of inconsistency, Angel, is enough to drive a well-ordered mind to utter insanity."

"Hey," Angel huffed. "You're not the only one who struggles with how to weave this...this thing of ours...into some semblance of a normal life." He paused and frowned. "Not that what I have is anything like a normal life. But, come on. We made a choice—it was a conscious choice, offered and accepted by two consenting adults, so we're doing the best we can with it...so here we are."

She blinked for a moment or two and then glanced at the thick, hard, well-formed cock in front of her face, then shook her head at the ludicrousness of the circumstances. "You do realize that I wouldn't put up with this," she hissed. "Well...whatever this bullshit is...if it were anyone else but you, don't you?"

"I said I was sorry," he told her, his voice suddenly raspy. "So, come on..."

"On the _sabbath_, Angel," she said as she looked up at him with a clearly annoyed look in her eye. "You know...you know what the significance of today is, and still...God, you just drive me crazy...so now, I think it's time for me to return the favor, and I think we're going to see how good you are at keeping your balance, Angel. But, for both our sakes', I'd suggest that you do your best to stay upright, hmmm?"

Brennan's tongue darted out of her mouth, and she ran it from one corner of her bright pink bottom lip to the other. Moving her other hand, she reached out and grabbed him in the tight sheath she'd created in the palm of one of her hands as she wrapped her long fingers around his swollen length. She fisted him slowly, dragging the pad of her thumb from the base of his shaft to the glistening tip and back again. Each time she did so, the torturously slow movement elicited a small groan from him.

"Mmmmm..." she almost purred as she tilted her head and studied him for a moment. "Mmmm..."

As soon as she'd reached for him, Angel felt a stab of pleasure tear through him that immediately pushed any memory of how Eve had touched his body out of his mind. The sole remnant of the rational part of his mind began to wonder, as she fisted him in a wickedly enjoyable way, that perhaps that was what Brennan had intended to do all along as she touched him. He both dreaded and yearned for her to wrap her hot wet lips around him, and with every few seconds that she didn't, he couldn't help but feel his excitement growing. When he glanced down and saw that she still hadn't moved her head any closer to his crotch, his impatience got the better of him. Gently, but firmly, he let his fingers intertwine in her silky, straight auburn hair. Placing a hand on each side of her head, he pulled her lightly forward.

"Don't tease me," he growled.

Brennan answered his statement with actions and not words as she immediately released his cock from where she'd held it in her hand and used her other one to press it flush against his body. She let her eyes dart up to meet his for a split second as he realized what she was about to do before she did it.

_Dare me? _she seemed to say as she looked at him with those expressive eyes of hers that had always held him in some sort of inexplicable thrall.

_Yeah_, he answered wordlessly. _I do._

This time when she leaned in towards him, her hot tongue made contact with his sensitive skin. She started at the base of his shaft, and used the flat of her rough tongue to swipe a zigzag pattern, moving in one direction and proceeding forward until she reached his tip. The swollen tip of his cock already gleamed in the soft light of the one or two office accent lamps that he'd left on earlier. Removing the hand that had pressed his cock flush against his body, she couldn't help herself as she opened her mouth and took just the tip of him in her mouth. She let her now freed hand move to cup his balls, as she kneaded small circles with her thumb.

The combination of finally feeling her mouth on him, combined with how she was palming his heavy sack while massaging it with her thumbs, caused him to almost come right in that moment. He bit down on his bottom lip, and managed to exert some level of self-control with only an unintelligible grunt escaping from his mouth as she worked him over. Despite the fact that she had a mouthful of cock in that moment, she couldn't help herself as she grinned at his tenacity. She gave the tip of his cock a few more light sucks, as if she were rolling a particularly large ice cube around in her mouth. She moved quickly, not letting her lips and tongue stay in any one place for any significant period of time as she concentrated on the top half of his shaft. After a minute, when she felt his grip on her head lessen slightly, she adroitly shifted her head away from him, and let him fall away from her mouth.

He was panting when she looked up at him, and she grinned evilly. "What do you think so far?" she asked him. "Am I as good as I said?"

Widening his eyes and gasping at the loss of contact, he blinked several times before he reached for her head and said, "Ask me again in a few minutes after I've actually come in your mouth. Then we'll see if it was worth all the build-up."

She chuckled at him again as she let him move her head closer to his cock that stood rigid and shining as it was covered in a mixture of his precum and her saliva. She instantly opened her mouth, and this time moved to take him as fully into her mouth as possible, spurred on by the sight of him twitching in anticipation of feeling her lips wrap around him again.

The first time she took him in her mouth completely, he was surprised when he pressed as far as he could and hit the back of her throat. For some reason, he expected her to begin gagging and let him lose. When she didn't, but merely moved her jaw slightly to accommodate his length and girth, he felt another flash of want course through him.

"God, I want you," he groaned as he threaded his fingers in her hair again. When he felt her begin to suck on him in earnest, his knees buckled a bit, and a mutter escaped his lips as he moaned, "_Unnnnggtthh_."

Brennan took the wobble she felt as a supreme compliment and also as a sign of encouragement. She quickly redoubled her efforts and began an alternating motion of sucking him as she moved her head forward and licking the circle of his shaft as she moved backward. Very quickly, she established a steady rhythm, and Angel felt the tugging in his navel moving hard and faster so that soon he felt a building wave getting ready to explode within him. He continued to pull her towards him, ignoring the fact that his efforts might be hindering more than helping his goal of letting her suck him until she'd drained every last drop of him dry.

"_Ooohhhh_—" he groaned, no longer caring if Lorne or the entire staff of the Wolfram and Hart-L.A. Office heard him when he came. "Fuck, Bren. Ohhh, fuck. That's good. So...so...good."

Finally hearing his gravelly voice egg her on, Brennan redoubled her efforts, increasing the speed at which her head bobbed up and down in front of him. At some point, she'd let her hands fall away from his balls, and her fingers had grabbed a muscular handful of his ass as he began to thrust into her mouth in earnest.

"Ohhhhh, shit," he muttered, feeling his release coming on hard and fast. "Bren...I think...oh, fuck. I'm gonna..."

Her only response was to wrap her lips around him tighter and to suck him even harder.

As pinpricks of light started to tear at the edge of his field of vision, his eyes rolled back into the back of his head, and he swallowed once as he felt her dug her nails into his ass, and he plunged into her mouth one last time.

"_Brennnnan_," he moaned, as he felt himself start to spend. "Oh, fuck, Bren—"

With one last grunt, he finally let himself go as he spilled his milky white come into her waiting mouth. He groaned with the ecstatic relief of it all as he felt his body shake with release. A couple of more jerks, and he was done. Brennan only let her mouth fall away from his now softening cock when she was sure she'd drained him of every last ounce of come that he had to give her. When he felt the moist cocoon of her mouth fall away from him, he whimpered slightly in protest.

Quickly standing up, Brennan couldn't help but chuckle as it was actually her legs that wobbled a bit despite the fact that she'd teased him earlier about being the one with shaky feet. She grinned as she met his eyes, and for a moment, it seemed they were both surprised that they were still upright. She took only a moment before she pushed him towards the back of the couch. He landed on the floor with a distinct _ummmph_, as he hadn't had time to kick away his trousers or his shoes. Looking up at her from where he'd landed on the flat of his back, he raised his head off the ground and tilted it slightly, confusion still evident on his face in the moments after his orgasm had rendered his brain low on operating capacity.

Stalking towards him, she narrowed her eyes and licked her lips, finally saying the first coherent words she'd muttered in some time. "Sweet," she chuckled. "Very sweet...just like I always knew it would be."

"Bren?" he said, not certain what she was going to do next and quite sure he didn't have a prayer at figuring it out considering the mind-sucking orgasm she'd just blown him to.

"That was once," she said. "Now, I intend to go for number two in fairly short order because I'm better than her. You said it, but I'm going to prove it. I'm better than her and every other one of them in every fucking way.." She stopped and looked around before she spoke again. "So...was...it...here?" she asked him.

"Uhhh, what?" he blurted out. He looked at her, blinking away the haze in his vision as he struggled to regain his bearings. His skin was flushed from his shattering release, which was made all the more mind-numbing by the fact that he'd been more or less aroused for the better part of an hour before he finally let go. "Bren?" he asked, narrowing his eyes as he watched her look around the room as if she was a lioness seeking the perfect place to mark her territory. "What are you—?"

"Was...it...here?" she asked. "Here...I think it was...the place where you fucked that demon-spawn trollop."

She didn't wait for an answer as she reached around and unclasped her bra. Slowly, she shrugged out of it, letting Angel enjoy the view of her removing the very pretty garment. Dangling it in her hand for a moment, she let it fall to the office floor in a wisp of silkiness. Not wasting another moment, she hooked her thumbs in the lacy waistband of her tanga panties and slowly peeled them off of her legs—legs that looked very, _very _long and luscious to Angel in that moment.

Prowling towards him, she narrowed her eyes, and Angel knew that he was in trouble—of the best kind—when he saw the telltale glow of her blue eyes start to get brighter with each step that she took towards him.

"I really hope," she told him as she pushed him onto his back and carefully stepped over him so that she was straddling him with each each knee pressing against his hips, "that you're ready to put some of that creative enthusiasm of yours to use...or do I need to give you a little help in the stamina department?"

"You...really...need to ask me that?" he groaned, his eyes narrowing as he looked at her with a glance of lustful want plainly writ on his face.

"Unless you're being less than truthful with me...you've come at least three times in less than three hours," she smirked at him. "And, since you're not a sixteen-year old who's never had sex before or some variant on a spidermonkey, I just want to make certain you can keep up with me, Angel. Now, if you need a bit of magical umph to make that happen, no problem, sweetness. Just tell me."

"You're so full of shit sometimes, Bren," he said. Thrusting up with his thighs, he knocked her off balance so she collapsed on top of him. He grinned as he felt her warm and pliant body fall onto his, and he wrapped his arms around her as they rolled over so that she was now the one underneath him. "You know I've never had any issues in that department. I can keep up with you, every step of the way..." He twisted his hips against hers. "No one's ever challenged me the way you have, Bren. As a lover—or otherwise. No one. The way you make me feel. You're the only one who can do that to me. The only one. So tell me what _you _want." he coaxed her. "Come on, lass. Tell me, and I'll do it. I can tell you want me...but tell me how you want me, and I'll give it to you."

"Only me," she told him. "I intend to fuck the image of Eve and this office out of your mind before I'm done. So...fuck me...fuck me harder, fuck me faster, fuck me more than you ever fucked her."

"Hmmmm," he chuckled. "We've always fucked that way, Bren. Harder, faster and with more...well, with more more everything...than anything I ever did with her...or anyone else. You know that. You've known it since the very first time, Bren—a hundred fifty years ago. But I'm all up for proving it to you again. You wanna do it here, yeah? Fine. I'm always game for you, Bren. Always."

Shifting a bit, Angel brought himself up on his knees, and this time it was his turn to straddle her. Quickly, he reached down, and wanted to brush his muscular chest against hers, but it took a moment for him to realize that he was still wearing his shirt. "Shit," he muttered, wondering for a moment how he could have forgotten he was still wearing it. Reaching down, he didn't bother to unbutton the shirt, but pulled it over his head and tossed it behind him. Then, he finally was able to press his skin to hers, and he felt a stab of excitement begin to build at the base of his spine. When he pulled away, and heard her mewl in protest, the excitement grew. Using his arms, he bent down and quickly used it to flip her over. Sliding one of his arms underneath the softness of her belly, he grunted as he lifted her up so that her back was flush against his chest and stomach as she knelt on her hands and knees.

Bringing his lips to her ear, he nibbled her earlobe and whispered, "This is what I did to her. I took her and used her and fucked her from behind...just like this. Twice. I was a fucking animal, Bren—rough and demanding. I gave her no quarter. I didn't stop or slow down to make sure she got off. I took her, hard, rough and fast." He nipped at her ear and growled. "I'll admit it. I wanna give it to you rough, Bren. Is that what you want? Do you want me to use you like I used her? Is that it? Do you want it hard and rough and fast, Bren?"

"_Yessss_," she hissed. "Now...right now."

Even though Angel hadn't moved his eyes to meet hers, he could tell by the familiar tickle of the electrical static around them that she was building very close to coming already. "God, Bren—" he moaned as he reached for her chin, turned her head and sought out her lips. "Why? We're better than that—so much better than that. Even...even before, before I got my soul back...even then I made sure you got two for every one of mine. It was always more than just me fucking you. Even back then, it was always different with you than with any other woman."

"Then," she grunted as she turned her face so that she was looking at him. "Prove it. I need you...I need you to prove it, Angel. Fuck me like you fucked her. Make me feel it...all of it...better than you did for her. It may be stupid, Angel, and it may make no sense, but it's what I want." She rotated her hips so that she could press against him to illustrate her point. "And I want it _now_."

When he felt her press her ass against his shaft—which had long since already hardened again for want of her—he moaned as he used his knee to spread her legs. Shifting slightly, he reached between them for his cock and brought it up to tip of the cleft in her ass. Parting the soft folds of her cheeks, he heard her moan as he felt her bend forward slightly to give him better access.

"Give it to me," she told him forcefully in a tone that left no doubts in either of their minds that she was making a demand of him.

Lifting his head, he leaned forward and pulled her hair, gently arching her head back so he could press his lips to her ear. He whispered in a gravelly voice, "If that's what you want, I'll give it to you." He stopped talking long enough to suck on her earlobe, bringing the soft and tender skin between his teeth, holding it there as he twirled his tongue around the sensitive flesh and then sucked on it for good measure. He felt Brennan tilted her head even farther back as she whined lightly in that throaty drawl of hers that had always made Angel's balls hitch and his cock stiffen at the same time. After a minute, he released her earlobe and then began to kiss his way down her neck and the strong curve of her right shoulder blade. He only stopped when he came to a particularly favorite swell of her shoulder. Pressing his lips to the warmth of her skin, he'd always been drawn to that one spot since it was one of two places on her entire body where he believed she smelled the sweetest...and the one place where he could let loose his fangs on her, but would never be able to get her to surrender to him no matter how hard he tried. "But, this time...it won't be on your terms, Bren. This time...this time it's on mine."

"Angel—"

"No," he grunted as he rolled his hips back and thrust towards her. "No...you wanted me to treat you like Eve? Then, this is how that goes. She was like a piece of meat, and I was a starving man. I devoured her. I fucking ravaged her. Like Angelus, I took and took and took and didn't give anything back except the come I left inside of her when I was done because she didn't deserve more, Bren. She didn't deserve anything else. She wasn't special. She was just a warm wet hole that I could stick my cock into and buck until I'd came." Reaching down, he grabbed his cock and used his hand to guide it towards her wet hole. "She was drenched and waiting for me too by the time I was ready to stick it in her. I took her and didn't stop until I was empty." He heard the tumble of his words and swallowed. "And it was empty, Bren. Fucking empty. After it was over, I felt empty." He jerked his hips into her, letting his shaft brush the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. "It's never like that with you," he added with a grateful sigh. "It hasn't been for a long, long time. But—if that's what you really want, who am I to deny you anything? It's fine by me."

Once he'd lined his shaft up with her entrance, he pushed forward and slid into her. For a moment, he forgot where he was and could only feel the ecstatic happiness that he'd reveled in each time he felt himself inside her once again.

"Oh, God, Bren—" he groaned, his eyes squeezed shut, and he felt himself begin to spiral towards his release already. "God...how you feel...how you always feel, how you've always felt. It's all I've ever wanted. Even...even when I was with Eve...with anyone else, it's...it's never _ever _been like this."

"Touch me," she moaned. "Oh, please...Angel. Move. Touch me. Please...you're killing me."

Only too happy to comply, he grunted as he gritted his teeth and began to move. After seven or eight fluid thrusts, when they'd found their rhythm, Brennan pressed back against him. Angel had to use his grip on her hips to steady himself as she cried out with each time he pistoned into her.

"Ahh," she moaned softly. "Ohhh, fuck. Ahhh, ahhhh, _ahhhhh_."

Angel almost didn't care how loud they were in that moment, but when he heard a small rustling behind them, he lifted one of his hands up off of her hips as he stilled his thrusts and quickly brought his hand to to cover her mouth. Offering her the fleshy part of his palm, he whispered, "Bite me if you have to." The slowing of his movements drew her attention. Brennan, processing his words as if on a five-second delay, could only swallow once before taking his meaning. She used what little rational thought that she could manage in that moment to convey her understanding and nodded.

Satisfied, Angel resumed moving. After another dozen strokes, he could tell they were both close as the air around them once more crackled with the blue electricity that had always heralded her release when she was with him. Angel struggled to last long enough to push her over the edge, and when he moved his other hand off of her hip, snaked it across her waist, and brought it to her swollen clit, he only had to move his thumb along the top in frenzied back and forth movement a few times before he achieved his goal. He felt her body tense, and as her tight walls fluttered around his shaft, he was kept from having to bit his own lip to keep from crying out when he felt her sharp teeth dig into the soft part of his skin.

"_Unnngggttthhh_," he groaned quietly as he pumped into her and released his hot come into her in three or four last jerks. "Oh fuck, Bren," he whispered softly as he collapsed limply against her body.

Somehow, Brennan managed to stay upright and that was the only reason the pair of them didn't collapse onto the ground.

After a minute, he moved his hand away from her mouth and slipped out of her wet folds, and used his nose to move her hair away from the sweep of her neck and placed a delicate kiss there. "God, Bren...that was so much better...so much better than before. Don't ever doubt that. She's got _nothing _on you," he told her with a languid smile tugging at his lips, even though she couldn't see it. "No one ever has...and I don't think anyone ever will. You know that, right? You trust it? You believe it? You believe me? You're the only one I want. Believe me, alright? Cause it's the truth." He laid another, slightly harder and more demanding kiss, sucking at the skin on her neck, then said, "Am I forgiven, lass? Tell me."

"Yes," she gasped as she felt him draw her skin between his lips with another sucking kiss. "Ohhhh, yes..."

"Are you sure?" he asked, pulling his mouth from her neck with a relieved sigh. "Mmm?" He laid another kiss on her soft, silky skin.

Brennan arched her neck in response to the pleasure of his touch. "God, yes," she hissed.

"Good," he snickered. "'Cause I don't think I was gonna win a battle of stubborns with you. You thick-headed, willful goddess, you. And you say I'm the stubborn one."

Slowly, by way of answer, Brennan—her lovely face flushed a bright pink color from her own orgasm—rolled over and turned her head to kiss him. But, just before their lips met, she whispered softly, "I think you're going to have to do that to me again, Angel...at least a couple of more times before I'll believe you."

He happily nodded as he met her lips with a kiss with acknowledgement of what they'd just shared and with a strong promise of what was to come.

* * *

They hadn't really bothered to dress after they'd managed to work up enough energy to stumble to the elevator and ride it back to his penthouse on the 30th floor since it was only a 3-floor elevator ride that had seemed rather long the first time they'd taken it down to his office that evening, but now seemed _incredibly_ short. She'd pulled on his shirt, while he'd tugged on his pants, and they both gathered what clothing they saw in a heap that was promptly dropped at the foot of his bed before he ripped his shirt off of her and proceeded to show her that he was, indeed, still good for acts three and four where she was concerned if she could keep up with him.

Later, replete and drowsy, Brennan lay splayed over his chest while he was situated in the middle of his bed. She smacked her lips and said, "I hate how you make me feel sometimes."

"What?" he asked as he rhythmically moved one of his hands up and down the smooth, ivory skin of her back. "Why?"

"In my work at the Jeffersonian, it...well, I don't use my powers very often. I mean, I don't use either magic or magick very often."

"Remind me again," Angel murmured against her. "What's the difference?"

"Magic is small things. Things that get done in the normal course of a day...trivial things, almost. They don't take a tremendous amount of effort or power on the part of a witch. But, magicks? Those are some serious spells. Those are the powerful, rare things that a witch only engages in when she must because there's a great cost in both energy and effort to make them work. Such spells when magick is work is never an undertaking to be taken on lightly or pursed without serious forethought of the consequences that such magicks can wrought." She paused and then continued, "As I said, I don't use my powers to cast either magic or magick most days. I know that makes you giddy, but it's not just because of you that I do it. There's a beautiful consistency to the scientific process, and it's come to bring me a great deal of solace in recent years. It's objective and factual and constant...and simple. Science can be beautifully simple...so very unlike everything related to magic. But, the more that I think and exist in that world, the more I get knocked off base when I come back to this world when I'm not just one of the world's best forensic anthropologists who works at the Jeffersonian Institute. When I leave D.C., and come back to the world of magic that I left behind...the world where I can be with you—even if it's just for whatever time we can steal here and there—it gets harder and harder for me to deal with the emotions when I come here. I'm not the same person I was, but I keep being reminded of her no matter how hard I work to distance myself and remake myself anew.."

"Bren," Angel whispered, turning his head and pressing a soft kiss on her forehead. "You don't really mean that. I mean, you're not—are you telling me you don't want me, or to be with me, after all that's happened between us? I know you're not. Right?" He rubbed his faintly-stubbled chin against her temple as a certain glassy sadness descended over his warm brown eyes. "Help me. I-I...I don't understand."

"No, of course I still want you," Brennan said with a faint waiver at the edges of her voice. "It's just...well, I can't make the shift from stoic, compartmentalized scientist to suave and debonair five hundred year-old witch that I once was as easily as I thought I could. Each time it gets more and more difficult. It's like I'm two separate people...and you have no idea how infuriating it is to make that shift...but when I do, you're the one constant."

He stopped rubbing her back for a minute and then asked, "Do you regret coming here?"

"No," Brennan said. "I just...you remember, don't you? You have your curse to bear just like I have mine...'bowed, domesticated, and finally broken.' Remember? Your soul was a curse, Angel. But my soul? It was parceled into three parts. That was the price to be paid for the deal I made for part of what's made me as I am today...the youth and the power."

Angel brushed his lips along the curve of her shoulder and nodded. "I know," he murmured. "I know."

"And, I can't help but feel more and more of an attachment to you since I gave you the power to break me, Angel. I think that's why...as more and more time has passed? Well, since you know this already...we both do. But since that night in Chicago...I don't think even I knew at the time how pivotal a night that was for me. The _logisitikon _was always mine to have and to do with what I could, and I think the reason I took to anthropology as I did was because it's a world where the_ logos _can not only function, but thrive. That only left the _thumetikon _and the _epithumetikon _to consider. I was always going to lose one of them...it was only a matter of time and a question as to who I would lose it to and under what circumstances. I didn't have a choice in which one I would part with...the _epithumetikon _is the feminine side. I'm a female, it's the part that defines me most in some ways. So, it was the _thumetikon _that I had to give away and learning to live without that has been...a struggle. It's made even more difficult when I'm around you and am reminded of what I lost. Because...when I'm with you, I get just enough of a taste of what I'm missing that I remember what I don't have. It's—it's part of what makes me so off kilter sometimes. The jealousy...the bitchiness...the hurt and anger that I felt getting stronger and stronger in the last few years? All of them contributing to the insecure vulnerabilities I have now? Well, I think that they've all emerged because I don't...I don't know how to handle that part of myself when I'm with you and remember that it's there...even if I can't feel it all the time."

Angel narrowed his eyes and scratched his jaw as he listened. "I know, Bren. It's...I know it's not easy. But...we agreed. We'd find a way to make it work."

"I know," she said, snuggling against him. "Sometimes...on some days, like today, it takes more work than on others, I suppose."

He was quiet for a minute and then said, "So is this your way of telling me I need to get you some type of warning label that says 'caution: do not operate rarely used parts of the logos without ensouled vampire supervision?'"

Brennan shot him a look and then said, "Don't make me smack you."

He wagged his eyebrows at her playfully and then a thoughtful look over took his face. "You know, I really should have been paying more attention to my Greek philosophy in school, aye?" he said with a smile, allowing his long-ago sublimated Galway brogue bleed through again. He reached over and tucked a lock of Brennan's hair behind her ear and said, in his normal, Americanized style, "So that's what you gave to me? Your _thumekiton_?"

"_Thumetikon,_" Brennan corrected him as he shrugged with a sheepish grin. She laughed, then continued. "When I found you that night back in Chicago, you'd lost your bearings, your sense of purpose. The _thumetikon _is the masculine third of the human soul, the portion often referred to as the 'spirited soul.' That part of the soul is said to be the wellspring from which come a sense of honor and duty, and which helps regulate the emotions and appetites so that the rational element of the soul, the _logistikon, _can govern. I had a vague sense that you needed my _thumetikon _more sorely than I did, and knowing that, as a woman, I really needed to hang on to my _epithumetikon, _I decided to part with my _thumetikon _and give it to you. And..." Brennan sat up a little, drawing her teasing thumb across his nipple before raising her head and kissing him lightly on the cheek**. ** "It seems as though you've done alright with it, for the most part."

"For the most part, huh?" Angel chuckled. "Thanks."

"I mean," she laughed, "that you've done well enough. Not as well as I could have done, given the chance, but not bad. A strong effort."

He rolled his eyes playfully. "You're so stingy with compliments," he said. "You make it seem like I'm in some sort of Twelve-Step Program for ego reduction."

"Are you?" she asked with a smirk. He stuck his tongue out and made a teasing _pffft _sound.

Angel looked away for a moment, lost in thought, then nodded to himself and gently turned her head, bringing her lips to his and kissing her, softly at first and then, as she parted her lips, more deeply and passionately, their tongues tangling for a few seconds before they broke apart again.

"What you did for me," he said, "back then, and even in all the time since, all those times...well, I'm really grateful for it." He stroked his thumb under her chin. "You saved me, Bren."

He pursed his lips and thought about what she had done, and the bargain she'd made. When she'd stumbled on him that night in the shadows, huddled on the sidewalk trying to conserve his warmth on that bitterly cold night as the wind snarled off Lake Michigan, and he'd followed into her apartment, he had no idea that she, too, had been hobbled by a costly bargain that meant her soul and her life was no longer entirely her own. But as that evening wore on, and the years since then passed, it was clear that, though she was—for the most part, that is—human, and he had long since lost his own humanity, the bond they shared was profound, and not only because she'd given him the power to destroy her. In a way, he thought as he held her close to him, relishing in the way her silky skin warmed his own, she knew his struggle more than probably any other being on earth.

"Yes," she said with a smile, which faded quickly as she returned to her earlier train of thought. "I know. It's just—"

"What?" he asked, sensing her hesitation.

Drawing a breath, she responded, "You remember...well, the terms of the original deal I made? The one that I made where, if I didn't find a compatible immortal to entrust with it before the five-hundredth anniversary of the day I struck that bargain, _He'd _take it and find a keeper for it?"

"Of course," he nodded at her. "As if I could forget something like that."

"Well," she said. "It's like I've said before...when I decided to make the choice to offer a part of myself to you...to give it to you as I did that night—I gave a piece of myself into your keeping. And, I'm only whole so long as our bond stays renewed every fifth sabbath. I think we learned our lesson, after you left Chicago." Brennan paused, pursing her lips and averting her eyes from his as she let her gaze fall on the line of his collarbone, skimming from the notch at the base of his neck and up to the outside of his round, muscular shoulders. She took a breath and said, "What I mean is, those five years you stayed with me, after that night, were in a lot of ways the best five years of my life, and—"

"I feel that way, too, Bren," Angel said, smiling at the feeling of warmth that oozed through his chest as he recalled the happy memories of that part of their lives. "But, Bren...you act like all the good times ended when those five years were over. We both know that's not true. When I left—"

"Angel," she said quietly. "You know...that time we were together? I mean, of course, I've been happy with you since then. Many, _many _times over. But...those five years, though—to have you with me, waiting for me when I came home each night with a kettle of tea on the stove, or a bottle of whiskey when you always knew it had been a bad day and that I'd need something stronger? Well, it was nice that way, to share our life the way we did for those few years. To be with you in the evenings, to fall asleep in each others' arms each night and sleep in late in the mornings—that was quite nice...perfect, really. I think that you were happy, too, Angel, in your own, quasi-brooding, vampiric kind of way..." She arched an eyebrow and smiled, hoping to elicit a smile from him, but her own face slackened as she saw his somewhat forlorn expression. "You were, weren't you? Happy, I mean."

He turned to her, nibbling the inside of his lip for a moment before he raised his eyebrows and a faint smile spread across his lips. "I was," he said. "I was happy. I didn't leave because I wasn't happy. I left because I didn't want to be happy at your expense, Bren. And because I wasn't sure how you could have the life you wanted, the life that would make you happy, and to have a life for myself—to do something with myself, that would somehow let me find a bit of purpose for myself and maybe some happiness—with us keeping on that way. And I wasn't happy those six months I spent in New York, after you went off to Mexico. It took me awhile to find myself, even after all that, and—"

"But we figured it out," she said, interrupting him lest he talk himself back into a brooding mood the way she had seen him do a thousand times before. "It took a few years, but we eventually figured it out—that we had to come together, at least every fifth year, on Halloween, to renew and reinforce the bond between us. Even though we've led separate lives since then, and had some significant bumps along the way, I think we've somehow made it work, in our own inexplicable way. Don't you?"

Angel blinked and asked, "What? Make it work?" A smile, not a faint one but a wider, toothier one, broke across his face. "Yeah, it's like you said earlier. For the most part, there are lots of good days...a few not so good days. But, in between them, we make it work. I'm not sure how or why, but yeah, we make it work." He turned and kissed her forehead again. "I wish that there was a way that we could do what we do and have what we have but be able to see more of each other. This—the way we've been—it's just hard. I miss you so much, Bren. I mean, maybe someday we'll figure out how to both of us be happy and make a difference in our respective worlds in the same place, but in the meantime?" He stopped and then said, "I wasn't just blowing smoke up your skirt earlier, Bren. I meant what I said...I don't want to keep doing this once or twice a year, or every third or fifth year. I-I...I think, maybe...we're at a point where we can try to be in the same place at the same time and maybe—" He cupped her jaw in his hand and drew his thumb along the edge of her cheekbone and tilted his head to the side as he gazed into her glistening blue eyes. "I want more, Bren."

She blinked at him a few times, and then said, "So...this is your way of starting _The Talk_, hmmm?"

Angel shrugged. "I was being honest when I said I've been thinking about it for a long time...I just didn't think that you—or me, if I'm gonna be 100% honest—were ready to make a serious go at things and have them finally work. But, now, Bren? Now...I think we can. And...I want to try."

Brennan considered his words for a moment and then said, "You really want to do this?"

"Yeah, Bren," he nodded. "I do."

When she answered again, this time, there wasn't any further hesitation on Brennan's part. "If that's what you want, then that's what I want, too, Angel," she said, her voice moist with emotion. "I think we've gotten ourselves into trouble when we try to keep separate lives apart. It doesn't work, and somebody just ends up getting hurt no matter how good our intentions were not to cause any pain or suffering."

"Yes," he said quietly. "Besides...it's not like we really have separate lives. We live apart, sure...and those lives may exist partially in other worlds, but I really think we can find a middle way, Bren...one between your world and mine...can't we?" Angel stroked his fingers over her soft, silky auburn hair.

"That's all I want," she said softly. "That's all I've ever wanted...I just, I'm not quite certain how to go about doing it."

"Well...what if we start simple?" he asked. "What if we try to see each other one weekend a month?" He paused, considering what he'd just said, and then frowned as he added, "I mean, it'll take some doing, but...well—"

Brennan smiled. "I know," she said with a soft laugh. "Travel isn't easy for you." She remembered the time he took the red-eye from LAX to Dulles and a mechanical problem with the aircraft delayed the flight for two hours, and how miserable he'd been upon arrival after spending the last two hours of the flight defending his use of the window shade from the crotchety old woman sitting next to him in First Class. "I could come to you," she said. "I think I can probably come up with an arrangement whereby Dr. Goodman at Jeffersonian permits me to take a three- or four-day weekend once a month."

"Really?" Angel said, a hopeful smile growing on his handsome face.

"Yes," she said. "To start...I think a good idea. I mean, we'll have to be careful about scheduling between my work at the Jeffersonian and my teaching...but, yes, I think it's a good place to start, especially since...well, since we're setting terms, here...I think the words you used earlier was formally to add a few labels to what we are, then you know that there'll be no more of this...what happened tonight, Angel."

"Bren, I already explained to you that the whole thing with Eve was out of my control," he said, a vague whine on the edge of his voice. "And you agreed that it was all a bunch of magic. And you said you forgave me. So, what's—"

"Listen, Angel," she said, gently cutting him off. "I did forgive...I _do _forgive you. And, look, I know that I was probably more...emotional tonight than normal when I thought...you were with Eve and all that mattered—all valid reasons and acceptable explanations aside—was that she was with you when I wasn't. But you have to understand...it hurt...and even if it's illogical and irrational, it still does make a small part of me afraid. It makes me very fearful that one day...you'll hurt me and see me 'bowed, domesticated, and finally broken.'"

He was quiet for a minute as the events of that night—the night she rescued him from his own oblivion on the cold, damp streets of Chicago—replayed through the newsreel of his mind.

"Bren," he said quietly, resuming the slow, rhythmic motion of his fingers over the smooth, soft plane of her back. He thought back to the first sixty years of their acquaintance, of the way he spoke then, when even a hundred-odd years after he'd left his hometown in on the west coast of Ireland, his voice still dripped with a honeyed Gaelic brogue. "Lass," he said with a faint smile that faded as his eyes skimmed over the features of her beautiful, square-jawed face. "I made you a promise that night. And I've never thought about breaking that promise...not once. Not for a moment. A hundred years I spent in hell and I never broke that promise, and I never will. I will _never _hurt you. I will _never _betray you. You just have to trust me. Trust me now as you trusted me then."

She considered his words and then leaned up to kiss him gently. "I'm still here, aren't I?" .

"Aye," he nodded. "That you are."

Brennan took a deep breath. "Then...Angel, please—promise me that...well...that, no matter what, whether we decide to see each other more often or stick to our earlier arrangement...I can't...it has to be all or nothing, Angel."

"Yes," he said, leaning in closer so that their foreheads touched. "I think it's always been that way, but we've been too blind to see it. You're it, Bren. You're the one I want. The only one I want. You know that, right?" He kissed her softly on the lips and pulled away, watching her expectantly.

"Yes," she said, her solemn nod slowly giving way to a wide, closed-mouth smile. "I know it. And you're it for me, Angel. The only one I want."

"Good, then," he said with a toothy grin. "And just so we're clear," he added. "I'm not letting you out of my sight for the next three days."

He reached over and held her jaw in his hand and pulled her lips to his for another kiss, grasping at her mouth with his and humming at the sweet taste of her mouth and the warmth that spread through his chest at feeling her tongue glance against his.

After a moment, he broke off the kiss and said, "On second thought, I'm inclined to not let you out of my arms for the next three days—at least not for more than a minute or two at a time, tops."

"What about being the CEO and president of said multidimensional evil law firm?" she asked him.

He was quiet for a minute and then said, "Except for one short conference call tomorrow morning, I'm gonna clear the rest of my schedule. It's just you, me, here...and I promise I'll make it up to you tomorrow once I've finished that damn conference call." He stopped and then tilted his head at her as a rather sly grin crossed his face. "On second thought, I've got a better idea."

"What?" Brennan asked him, the amusement clear in her voice.

Leaning forward, he looked deeply into her eyes as he said, "Stay with me."

"I already _am _staying with you," she laughed. "Remember? You've got me for the next three days before I have to be back in D.C."

"No," he said. "That is, I want you to stay longer."

Blinking a few times, Brennan arched her eyebrow as she said, "For how long?"

"A week," he responded. "Maybe two."

She stared at him for a minute and then shook her head. "Angel, come on. You know I can't just disappear from my job at the Jeffersonian for two weeks. I have work to do—"

"Then, you can do it here," he offered. "You already have your laptop. Anything else you need is just an elevator ride away. Don't you know that we've got some of the best lab space in the entire world here, down in Practical Sciences? And, Fred—she's heading up the lab down there for the company now—she'll love you. And I think you'll really like her. This'll be great because it'll give you two an excuse and a chance to finally meet. You two can do that genius talk thing of yours and play in the lab during the day and at night, uhhhh...we can play here." He punctuated his offer with a toothy grin. "Come on, what do you say?"

Brennan stared at him for another minute before she said, "You're serious, aren't you?"

"Dead serious," he nodded. "Stay. I want you to stay with me."

"Angel, I can't—" she sighed sadly. "You know I can't. All my work is back in D.C. I can't just leave the cases I'm working on there to sit—"

"Why not?" he asked. "Get whatever you need Fed-exed here, or better yet. Why don't you let me find you some really interesting bones to play with? I'm sure we've got to have some skeletons somewhere that need to be dusted off and pranced out during a long overdue spring cleaning." He paused and then gave her another cocky smile as he said, "You want me to call the Jeffersonian? Because I will. I'll tell them that we've got a very difficult case that we need their best bonesy expert on to help us with in an extended consultation, and—"

Laughing, Brennan felt unusually liberated as she said, "Consultation, huh?"

"Yup," Angel nodded solemnly. "One of the most important kinds."

"And, this consultation for which I'm so desperately needed?" Brennan asked, her eyes sparkling as she stared at him.

"Uh huh..."

"That consultation wouldn't happen to need to take place mostly in your bed would it?" she asked.

Moving his head towards her ear, he nipped it lightly before he whispered, "Damn straight it will."

"Angel—" she sighed, shivering slightly as he nibbled on her ear. "I can't—" But even as she was saying 'no' verbally, Angel could feel her resolve weakening.

"Stay," he repeated with another puff of hot air on her neck. "Stay with me." He punctuated his offer with another kiss, as he gently but firmly began to suck on the pulse point at the base of her neck. When she began to make a slight mewling sound, Angel knew he had her. "Say you'll stay."

"Yes," she breathed.

"Yes, what?" he prompted her.

"Yes," she said softly. "I'll stay."

"Excellent," he said as he moved his lips across her neck and towards her job. "Then after my conference call, you can have breakfast in bed and anything else you want."

She cracked a smile at him as she said, "Anything else I want, hmmm?" She paused and then gave him an evil smile as she said, "So, I guess that doesn't mean that I can I just order off the menu and choose you as the only thing I'd like to consume for my breakfast tomorrow morning?"

His brown eyes darkened with pleasure at her question. By way of an answer, he pulled her towards him, rolled them over, and began to give her a preview of what was on the chef's menu if he was her aperitif of choice once the morning came after all.

* * *

If there had been one thing that Harmony Kendall had grown used to in her time working for Wolfram and Hart, it was that there was no such thing as a 'normal' business morning—particularly on the morning after the company's annual Halloween party More than half of the department heads had already called in 'sick' and about one-half of those who'd actually managed to pull themselves up and were attempting to stumble into work had already called their respective supervisors to let them know that while they were definitely coming in, there would be some 'unexpected' delays in their arrival. Thus, Harmony was more than prepared to handle any grumbles she got from Angel and his immediate circle when they told her they wanted something done, and she knew she would have trouble making that happen due to a lack in available personnel.

However, what Harmony never would've expected...not in a million-trillion-gazillion years was that she found two very brief if cryptic messages from her boss. The first one she found, a yellow post-it note taped to her computer read "Clear Calendar for Next Three Days. No questions asked." It was signed with a tell-tale single initial—_A_. While she was puzzling over this strange development, Harmony began to suspect that perhaps someone had left the note on her computer screen to dupe her so that she got into trouble with Angel. However, when she sat down at her desk and turned on her computer screen, occasionally staring at the suspicious looking note as she chewed her bottom lip in confusion, she waited for her login on the firm's intranet to pop up so that she could check her email. She was debating if she should try to see if Angel was in his office—he'd had an important conference call two hours earlier that she knew he'd kept from the stack of notes that she saw he'd also left her on her desk. As Harmony contemplated this realization, she came to the conclusion that there was at least one good point of evidence that the post-it note was real, i.e., Angel had already been in the office and left. Then, when she opened up her email client, she saw an email from a familiar email address with a strange subject line that had been sent three hours earlier. The subject line read: "Yes, It's Real." Clicking on it, Harmony let out a sigh of relief as Angel told her that yes, he'd left her a note telling her to clear his calendar for three days; yes, he was serious; no, he wasn't joking; no, she couldn't ask any questions. He ended it by reminding her to check on the still passed-out empath demon who'd taken up residence in Angel's office.

An hour later, Harmony had just finished transcribing the notes Angel had left for her from the morning conference call when a perky voice addressed her. "Good morning, Harmony."

Looking up from her desk, Harmony's brow furrowed lightly as she saw Angel's liaison to the Senior Partners come bouncing toward her. "Yes?" Harmony asked, having never really liked Eve since she'd met her a couple of months before since she reminded her just a little too much of herself for comfort.

"Is Angel in?" she asked, tilted her head in the direction of his closed office door. "Normally, I'd go straight in, but I figured he might be a bit touchy after what happened yesterday, so I thought I'd behave just this once to keep him on his toes." She turned her head back to Harmony and then said, "I need to talk to him about something."

Narrowing her eyes, Harmony said, "You can't."

"Why not?" Eve asked, some of her smile disappearing. "I need—"

Mentally complementing herself on being professional enough not to roll her eyes at a person who, technically, Harmony supposed, was another firm employee, she tried to keep her responses in a similar vein when she spoke again. "Look, I know you're used to getting whatever you want whenever you want, but right now, if you need to talk to Angel, I'd suggest you send him an email. Or, if you want, you can leave a message with me, and I'll give it to him the next time he checks in. But, you can't—"

"Checks in?" a cultured English voice suddenly interrupted as Wesley Wyndam-Pryce suddenly appeared out of his office. Taking in the sight before him, his eyes darted back and forth between Eve, Harmony, and Angel's closed office door. "Did Angel go somewhere and not tell us?"

Looking to Wesley, Harmony's firm resolve crumbled a bit as she said, "Well, errr, not exactly. At least, I don't think he did so, but I'm not too certain. I just know he's—"

"Not in his office," a fourth voice suddenly interrupted, finishing Harmony's sentence as he did so. Spike's sharp Cockney caught Wesley and Eve's attention. "At least, he isn't anymore."

"Hey, blondie bear," Harmony said, unable to help herself as she flashed Spike a playful smile. "You over the case of uber happies you had yesterday?"

Tilting his head, Spike nodded, "Fuck yes. For the most part, I'm back to being my normal wanker of a self, thanks for asking." He then turned back to Wesley and Eve as she said, "What do you need the brooding ponce for, anyway?"

Eve narrowed her eyes and then answered vaguely, "Just normal Senior Partner Liaison/CEO stuff."

"Oh?" Spike asked. "And, that wouldn't happen to be code for you hoping to get another shot at turning a few more tricks with Captain Forehead, would it?"

A slight frown marred Eve's face as she said, "No. It wouldn't. I really need to talk to Angel about business."

"It'll have to wait," Spike said. "He's busy."

"Doing what?" Wesley asked, as he lowered the old manuscript he held in his hands, and looked at the incorporeal vampire with clear curiosity. "And, earlier, you said he's not in his office 'anymore'. So, does that mean he was in his office earlier, and you saw him?"

For a split second, Spike looked down at his feet, and smiled to himself as he recalled what he'd stumbled into the night before when he'd heard a noise in Angel's office several hours after the Halloween party ended, and he'd thought Lorne might've awakened. While he could've done without the part of seeing Angel come when Brennan sucked him into oblivion, he did admit that he admired the rack the witch had always had—particularly when she looked as lovely and flushed as she had when she'd been giving Angel a blowjob in his office. However, after a minute, Spike sobered and quickly wiped the smile off his face when he remembered how angry a certain witch with blue eyes could get when she was pushed too far. He winced as he recalled a particularly nasty hex she'd put on him not long after he'd been sired by Drusilla in early 1882 that had left him with a horn in the middle of his forehead for just under a month because he'd made a lewd comment about the size of her tits and how Angelus appeared to enjoy being attached to them like she was his nursing mother.

Shaking away the image, Spike answered, "I did. And the right question to ask, mate, it wasn't _what _he was doing at the time, but _who _the tosser was doing when last I saw him." He left his vaguely cryptic mark unfinished but for one more nod of acknowledgement before he turned back to Eve. "Now, as for you, you heard what Harmony said. Angel's busy, so unless you're prone to being hexed, I'd say sod off for the next couple o' weeks. She's got a nasty streak in her you'd do well to stay away from, but don't say you heard that from me."

He paused for a moment, considered what he'd just said, and then nodded again before he turned away from the group and disappeared back from whence he'd come, leaving Harmony, Eve, and Wesley watching in open-mouthed surprise as he went.

* * *

The next day, Brennan woke to feel the luxurious softness of Angel's sheets caress her naked body. The bed was colder than she'd expected, but since she was used to him disappearing—whether to feed, to save somebody, or to join a conference call with some demon clan now, it seemed—she knew he'd be back eventually. Quickly scanning the room for a note, not that she really expected one, she smiled when she glanced at a small cart that stood at the foot of the bed. Not bothering to clutch a sheet to cover her form, after she stretched in the bed, she let out a loud yawn before she threw her feet over the edge of the bed and walked towards the cart.

Arrayed on a grouping of silver platters were a selection of pastries, muffins, and bagels. A silver teapot sat over a small bunsen flame while Brennan saw a small silver creamer and selection of butters and whipped cream cheeses sat cooling in baths of icewater. She grinned as she saw her preferred selection of Earl Grey tea bags sat next to a stack of Irish Breakfast tea bags—once again a silent reminder of the age-old debate they'd had about which was the better type of tea...English or Irish. She lifted the Twinings' green-wrappered tea bag to her nose and sniffed it appreciatively. Although she'd never concede it out loud to him, Brennan had actually come to appreciate the Irish Breakfast tea he favored over the many years of their acquaintanceship. As she set the teabag down, her eyes darted the corner of the tray and she took in the sight of what looked like a jar of what seemed to be fresh strawberry preserves sitting next to a small crystal bud vase that held a single butter-yellow daffodil.

Brennan was about to take what looked to be a brown sugar tart covered in a drizzle of confectioner's sugar from the wide array of breakfast treats when she heard a shuffling in the outer room. She frowned when she instantly sensed it wasn't the one person who it was supposed to be.

Her suspicions were confirmed when a female voice called out, "Angel?" The tell-tale clack of heels on his floors echoed as the voice repeated her initial query while she walked towards the bedroom. "Angel? You here?"

As Eve rounded the corner and walked into the room, took in the sight of Brennan—who stood glaring at her with hands clasped defensively on her hips—she smiled as she saw that the other woman wasn't even making a move to cover herself.

"Why, hello there," Eve said.

Taking a disdainful sniff of the air, Brennan made a face as she recognized the tart scent immediately for what it was as she said, "Ahhh, you must be Eve."

"And, you would know that how?" the younger petite woman asked with an amused smile still clear on her face.

Chuckling, Brennan said, "Easy...I could smell you."

"Dandy," Eve grinned, refusing to be cowed by Brennan's behavior. "So, is Angel here?"

"No," Brennan said gesturing at the rumpled sheets and the pile of their clothes that they'd brought with them from his office and dumped at the foot of his bed. He'd obviously come and gone, and although Brennan had no way of knowing that he'd already completed his conference call—and had disappeared to go purchase her a second and fresh bouquet of daffodils—it didn't really matter to her as she stared at Eve with an unimpressed look on her face. "And, even if he were here , he'd be busy, so we'd both be telling you to come back later—when you had a properly scheduled appointment as made with his assistant, Harmony—anyway."

"Uhhh huh," Eve chuckled. "And, who are you again?"

"An old friend," Brennan said as she plucked the tart she'd been considering eating before Eve's arrival from the tray, brought it to her lips, and took a bite. She chewed it thoughtfully before she swallowed, then tilted her head at Eve and added, "A _very _old friend."

"Let me guess," Even said as she stared directly into Brennan's eyes. "You just flew in on your broom for the holiday or something, right?" Eve told her. "Ms...Brennan is it?"

"Dr. Brennan," she quickly corrected Eve. "Dr. Temperance Brennan of the Jeffersonian Institute." She stopped and then snapped her fingers, a familiar blue light shooting out and bouncing towards Eve. When it enveloped Eve and held her firm, Brennan walked past her towards Angel's closet, reached inside, and pulled a black sateen button down shirt off of one of his hangers. Shrugging into it, she smoothed the fabric with her hands and then turned around to face Eve. She grinned as she said, "You know, he hates it when I use my powers. And, now he's going to know I did it, and he's going to be pissed off because he especially doesn't like it when I use them near him...but, he can smell it on me. So, since it's not like I'm not going to hear him complaining about it since I've already gone and used them to get your attention anyway, I suppose it's only logical to take this opportunity to have a little chat between the two of us, hmmm, Eve? Because you obviously have an idea of who I am...and I know _exactly _who you are...now that we've gotten the social niceties out of the way, I think it's more than past time to educate you on the finer points of how I don't like to share my toys...Angel being first among them. I never have, and I doubt that I ever will."

Her eyes skimmed over the features of Eve's face and she smirked at seeing the anxiety flicker in the young woman's eyes.

"And," she continued, "despite that fact that he wants to chalk everything that happened between you two last night up to mystical powers of a sleep-deprived empath demon, I'm not so certain. Especially, since I know my compulsion magics well enough to know that there has to be a basis of want on the part of at least one person involved in the spell for it to take hold. And, since we both know that the only reason Angel might've had a want of you is because your coloring might, in a vague way, remind him of me—well, that only leaves one person who can be wanting between you two, as evidenced I think quite clearly by the fact that you keep breezing into his apartment...his _personal _space...without invitation or right just because you think you can get away with it for some reason. So, as I said, all that means is we need to have a little chat to make certain none of this happens again. Now, do we understand each other...or do I need to go into more...detail?"

Eve could only blink in silence, not being able to actually verbalize as response, and her silence seemed to inordinately please Brennan as the witch's lips curled into a waiting smile as she decided what she would do next to drive her point home.

* * *

~The End~

* * *

**A/N2- **_So, there we have it. Was it as good for you all as it was for us? ::blinks:: Anyway, coming up next in our sixth of nine pieces, and there's not so nearly as large a time gap between five and six. We will be in D.C. in 2004. For those keeping track, yes, that does catapult us past the series finale at the end of Season 5 in Angel and hurtle us closer and closer to the series premiere of Season 1 in Bones. Weirdest coinkydink ever on that one, huh? Want to see what happens to Angel and Bren next (and, yes, we can guarantee that it will continue to be complicated, emotional, but oh-so-hot in that way that only dharmasera tosses out there)? Then, please...help us do your things by doing ours. Reviews are so precious, and most readers don't even know how important they are to writers. So, if you even moderately liked what you've seen here, and want to see some more, take 30 seconds, and let us know. Our deepest thanks in advance._


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